Time to move on, we need to be in Glacier NP on Sunday to meet up with Tom, our brother-in-law. Looking forward to seeing him - the last time was in October when we met in Sedona, AZ. We stayed in Grand Coulee for 2 nights, mainly to relax and catch up since we know the next week will be full.
We wanted to leave early today and got up at 6:00 to get ready. Oops, the people in the RV next to us were still sleeping and didn’t get up until 7:54. Shucks. So much for that early start. We found a Safeway for donuts, parked, walked in, scoured the store for donuts and realized this store was too small for a bakery. Shucks again.
And, finally we’re off. Up over the bluffs around Grand Coulee and we’re in the high desert of Washington. Soon, however, we hit the wheat and canola belt, acres and acres of yellow canola crops and acres and acres of green wheat crops. Tractors in the fields, grain elevators in the small towns, farmsteads surrounded by trees as wind breaks. Why, we’re in Iowa, right? Wrong. But it seems very much the same.
We rolled into Montana and found a campground that I had heard of. It’s not fancy, it’s not a destination campground, it doesn’t have a pool nor a tennis court BUT, it is free, it has wi-fi, it has a pull-throughs, it has a picnic table with each ‘site’, is surrounded by trees and it has 30 amp electricity (well, after Gary tested the 4 plugs that we had at our site, he found two that actually worked and I’ll have to admit that this looks a bit primitive.) Can you beat that? Look at those trees.
It also has a restaurant and a gift store with this little number which Gary found absolutely irresistible. And, no, I’m kidding here. We did see a little boy walking out proudly in his coon skin hat. Davy Crocket still lives.
We ate dinner and then took our daily walk. We had intended to walk around the campground which is attached to a dusty lot but took a turn to the left when we saw a sign that said ‘Savenac Historic Tree Nursery.’ Always ready to see the out of the ordinary we wandered through. Seems that back in 1907 while on his honeymoon (see, I told you we’d have romance today) forester Elers Koch saw an abandoned homestead along Sevanac Creek and envisioned a nursery for the state of Montana.
He began work the following year and had seeds planted for the first growth. Unfortunately, people were not so fire conscious then and tragedy struck when several fires which were burning in the area coalesced, became one fire and burned 3000 acres, his seedlings with it. The terrible tragedy is that 78 Forest Service employees died in these fires.
But Koch restarted and by 1915 he had 10,000,000 (that’s right: ten million young trees and by 1930, his nursery was the largest supplier of tree seedlings in the US. Sevanac, under Koch, was also a pioneer in research and development. It developed hardy varieties of trees, used burlap covered bales to cover the roots and developed the use of ‘shingle toe’ (shredded sawdust) instead of sphagnum moss to keep seedlings moist in transit. This is still used today.
We walked through he grove of 78 trees planted as a memorial to the fallen fire-fighters, walked around the nursery area, through the original buildings and then on the Mullen Road. This was a road carved out of the rocks and mountains of the Montana area between 1859 - 1863. It was used by prospectors coming into Montana. Not much of this road remains but this is a small section with a stone bridge built over the creek.
See, Romance, Tragedy, Technology and History, all rolled into one. A great end to our day and a totally unexpected treat.
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