We've been spending 2 nights in Libby. When she was young, Kristen's family used to come up to Libby to visit her Dad's Aunt Bernice and Uncle Leonard.
Bernice was Kristen's grandmother's sister, and, when Kristen's grandmother died when she (Kristen) was 2 years old, Bernice stepped in to fill the role (she and Leonard had no children of their own). Leonard and Kristen's grandfather served in World War I together. When they returned home, they double-dated and married the 2 sisters.
Our first order of business here was to find Bernice and Leonard's graves. It was easy to use the internet to find out what cemetery they are in and to even pull up a picture of their headstones. Finding the actual graves was another matter. We ended up at City Hall where they not only knew where they were but were able to give us a map of the cemetery with the names on all of the graves. Even then, we almost decided that the map must be of a different cemetery before we finally started finding names that matched. To shorten an already too long story, we found the graves.
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| The stream beside our campground. Very full (like all other waterways that we've seen). |
On our only full day here, we did some sightseeing once we had completed our search for the graves. Our first destination was Kootenai Falls and swinging bridge.
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| The Kootenai River - very wide and fast flowing and, apparently, so deep that it almost looks calm. |
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| Mom and Dad taking the baby ducks out for a swim on the Kootenai River. Kristen commented that they had better stay close to shore or those babies might find themselves in Astoria. |
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| Beautiful woods on the way out to the falls. |
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| The Kootenai Falls are not so much a falls as they are a really intense (class 16?) rapids. |
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| More of Kootenai Falls (from the same location as the last shot). |
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| The swinging bridge (just downstream from the falls). |
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| The swinging bridge. |
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| Upstream from the swinging bridge. |
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| Downstream from the swinging bridge. |
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| This is as close as Kristen got to the swinging bridge. |
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| That's me. |
Our next destination was Libby Dam. Kristen didn't remember there being a dam and that was with good reason. Her last visit was in '61. The US and Canada didn't agree on the building of the dam until '64 and the dam wasn't completed until the early '70's. Agreement was needed because the reservoir extends across the border.
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| On the way to the dam, we spotted this bald eagle. We also spotted a pair of golden eagles and didn't get a picture. Nests were everywhere. |
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| Libby Dam from downstream. |
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| Libby Dam |
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| Libby Dam from the backside. The water is low because the dam's primary purpose is flood control and there's a huge amount of snowmelt yet to come. |
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| The Koocanusa Reservoir (KOO from Kootenai. CAN from Canada and USA from USA) |
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| We were thinking that the 67 must be air temperature. If not, who's ready for a dip? |
Finally, we headed for Libby's Heritage Museum. The museum was very well organized (I guess anyplace would seem organized after that place in Polsen) and we really enjoyed it.
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| The indoor part of the museum is inside this huge 12 sided log cabin. |
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| Kristen wanted her picture taken with this giant frying pan. That previous picture wasn't good enough so here's another. |
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| Here's the explanation for why that giant frying pan even exists. Apparently, they actually cooked with it. |
Tomorrow, we're off to Couer d' Alene, ID
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| Just had this visitor as I was sitting outside the trailer, finishing up this post. |
-JC-
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