Landmarks

When I was a boy, my Dad owned and operated the Playmill Theatre in West Yellowstone, Montana.  Because of the theatre season and the school year, it necessitated a week or two in the spring or a week or two in the fall, or sometimes both of driving back and forth between Rexburg, Idaho where we lived in the winter and West Yellowstone where we lived in the summer.

I remember as a small boy, thinking I was somehow magical because I often went to bed in West Yellowstone and woke up in bed in Rexburg.  The two towns are an hour and a half away.

My sister who is a couple of years older than me and I made a game of looking for landmarks along the way.  It made the hour and a half trip go a lot quicker in our minds.  Now that I'm older and living in the area again, I have taught the game to my kids.  Yesterday, on our way up to Yellowstone, we stopped and photographed each of the landmarks.  Enjoy.

The Eagle Tree

The Eagle Tree

We started the landmark game after we ascended the Ashton Hill, (which in reality is the Huckleberry Ridge Caldera, the largest vocano in the world).  At the side of the road, and at the top of the hill was a huge Douglas Fir tree that had at one time been struck by lightning.  The top limbs looked to us like an eagle coming to rest on its nest with it's wings outstretched.  The Eagle Tree is still there set aside from the rest of the forest.

Swan Lake

Swan Lake

Swans on Swan Lake.  You have to look real close.

When I was a boy, Swan Lake was all open water with a few lily pads and reeds at the edges.  Across the street was another body of water, which had at one time been part of Swan Lake, but the road went over it and kind of choked it off.  I watched that other lake become a meadow over the years and slowly, Swan Lake will end up that way too.  There is very little open water on the lake these days, but the swans still come.

When I was a boy, Dad would count the swans in the spring and say it was an omen on how many millions of dollars we would earn that year.  I was excited one year because there were six swans.  Unfortunately, the number of swans never correlated with any millions of dollars.  Maybe that was fortunate.

The Osborne Bridge

The Osborne Bridge

I'm not sure if this was a bridge for the railroad or if it was the old highway.  It is in Harriman State Park, which used to be called the Railroad Ranch.  Investors of the Union Pacific Railroad owned this land once and the Harriman Family donated it to the State of Idaho on the condition that they create a professionally managed state park out of it.  We haven't explored Harriman State Park yet, but it's on our list.

Last Chance

Last Chance

Last Chance is a little village or neighborhood in the greater community of Island Park, Idaho.  The community of Island Park boasts the longest main street in the world.  It's thirty-one miles long.  Not bad for a community of only 286 permanent residents.  In the summer months, that number rounds out to thousands when the people with vacation homes come back. 

Last Chance is the first of several little neighborhoods in Island Park.  It's not very pretty, and if I were making the landmark game now, I'd have chosen something a little more spectacular, but heck, we were kids.

Ponds Lodge

Pond's Lodge

Like Last Chance, Pond's Lodge is a little neighborhood in the greater Island Park community.  It is situated on the Buffalo River and vacation homes skirt back along it's banks for quite a long distance.  They are unobtrusive, however.  The residents of this part of the world have a profound respect for nature.

Elk Creek Station

Elk Creek Station

Probably the least spectacular of the landmarks.  For us it was only a landmark because there is a highway perpendicular to Highway 20 that leads to a scenic byway for the Nez Perce Trail.  On that road was a cabin site that my parents owned.  Sadly, we never built the cabin there.  Dad was always too busy with the Playmill for us to have a separate cabin.  So we'd go up every summer and spend a day or two at the site and imagine what it would be like when we actually built the cabin there.

The Steeple Tree

The Steeple Tree

Inbetween Elk Creek Station and Mack's Inn was this lone Cathedral Fir (that's what my brother called it) that looked like a church steeple.  Part of the unofficial landmark game was to be the first one to see it and call out, "I see the steeple tree!"

This was the hardest of the landmarks to photograph and we had to get it from the other side, going the other direction.

Mack's Inn

Mack's Inn

Mack's Inn is a shadow of it's former self, because the main building burned in the mid-eighties.  It was a great old log structure with lots of character and a beautiful, huge, stone fireplace.  It was like a mini-Old Faithful Inn.  It was never proven, but arson was suspected.  Now, the outbuildings still exist and people still hang out there, but the iconic Inn is only in memories.  I wish they'd rebuilt it.

When I was a kid, we used to go to Mack's Inn and rent paddleboats.  Lots of great memories doing that.

Sawtelle

Sawtelle

Mount Sawtelle is the mountain that dominates the Henry's Lake Flats.  In the old days (when I was a kid) the world's largest population of Sandhill Cranes used the flats as a nesting ground in the spring.  I don't think they do so any longer.  I haven't seen very many cranes there in many years.  Sad.  The flats also host a healthy population of pronghorns.  They are mis-named antelope by the locals here, but they aren't a true antelope and pronghorn is their real name.

According to legend, Chief Sawtelle was such a good man that when he died, the wind and rain carved his likeness in the mountain.  If you look closely, you can see his headdress on the left and his chin on the right.  The microwave tower on the summit is where the band of his headdress would be.

The Grave

The Grave

When I was young, I noticed a wrought iron fence in a stand of aspen at the north end of the Henry's Lake Flats.  We stopped once and there was a marble tombstone marking a grave.  The weather had worn all of the writing off of the tombstone so we had no idea who it belonged to.  Now, the tombstone is gone.  It has been for a number of years.

This is the hardest landmark to spot and is almost invisible in the summer when the trees are leafed out and the underbrush is lush.  Much easier to spot in the spring.

Howard Springs

Howard Springs

Garrett drinking at Howard Springs

General Howard allegedly stopped here during his pursuit of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe.  There is a natural spring here that has been tapped and plumbed into this really cool drinking fountain for weary travelers.  We stop here almost every time we drive by now.  My kids think it's the best water in the world.  I agree.

The Continental Divide

The Continental Divide and state line

When the men who were determining the boundaries of the western territories, they were supposed to make it into a grid.  The western states were all supposed to look like Wyoming and Colorado.  When they got to Idaho, they were doing that and suddenly they came to the continental divide and said, "Whoa, a natural boundary!"  They followed the continental divide and cut the rich gold and gem lands out of Idaho and gave them to Montana.  That all by itself made Montana the coolest state in the union.  If I didn't like Montana so much, I'd be upset.

In my younger days, there was a sign showing the continental divide.  Now it's just the state line.

The One Room Schoolhouse

The One Room Schoolhouse

This is the last of the landmarks on the way to West Yellowstone.  It is situated on the land belonging to the Diamond P ranch, which is a dude ranch.  When I was a kid, we rented horses and rode the trails.  Lots of fun.

After the schoolhouse, it was a couple of curves in the road and we'd try to be the first to spot West Yellowstone.  The trees made a V-shape and the town was visible through it.  The only time you couldn't see the town was if you happened to be behind an eighteen wheeler.

It was a game that we played to make the time go by faster and since I was the youngest, I didn't see the steeple tree first very often or the town of West Yellowstone, but I have many fond memories of playing this game.

Lionhead

Lionhead

We only had one landmark going the other way.  Just before the border into Idaho, from the Montana side, is this mountain called Lionhead.  If you use your imagination you can see the profile of a lion's head in this mountain.  Typically, we drove back to Idaho at night and often slept most of the way.  It's still fun for me to find pictures in mountains and clouds though.