a morning adventure

Decided to drive up to Gem Peak Lookout, an old fire tower in the Cabinet Mountains, known of especially great views. From the pavement, it's 13 miles of gravel & dirt forest service roads. The first 6 miles were good, wide, well-graded gravel roads. Saw a family of turkeys with 8 babies almost grown, & many Indian paint brush flowers.

Stopped at a self-serve roadside stand & picked up some sugar snap peas & a couple of zucchini; their farm is in a lovely valley. 

The next 6.5 miles were a very narrow road, & many stretches had long steep drop-offs - real white-knuckle stuff, even in a pickup truck meant for such conditions. I kept praying that nobody would come the other way, as backing up to a wide spot to allow someone to pass would have done me in. 

After not seeing one other vehicle this whole way, about 2 miles shy of the lookout, a school bus came from the other direction. I thought that the stress of the drive had me hallucinating; who in the world brings a group in a schoolbus into such a place? Both the bus driver & I rolled down our windows to exchange greetings. Turned out it was just 1 guy & his 3+ dogs in a decommissioned schoolbus. He looked like a wild mountain man, & told me that there were huckleberries all around there (while showing me his bag of berries), & that he was going to camp up there for a couple of nights. Yikes! Fortunately, we met where a side road came in, so passing was no problem. 

After that, I continued on through scenery like this, then turned the last corner before the lookout to see this gate. Really? They couldn't have added to sign 13 miles back noting that the lookout is closed?

 

 

Unfortunately, there wasn't room to park to walk up past the gate to the lookout, just room to turn around. I did get out & snap these pics - lovely views, if not the 360* expected at the top. 

A bit later, I drove along the Bull River & visited the first ranger station built in the Kootenai National Forest.