Garden Bridge

Garden Bridge
No matter where you are there's always a bridge to Home

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Our Trip To Eureka, Part 1!

As everyone knows, Mom and I came down to Eureka Montana on Friday to go to the outdoor quilt show that they have here every year on the first Saturday of August. We left home at 10:00 AM our scheduled time of departure, got almost to the border at Del bonita, and realized I had left my Quilt Templates business cards at home, so we were back home at 11:00 AM. We got a phone call from Steve, who had locked himself out of his car in Raymond (second time this week), so we went there with the extra key and got him back into his car. We were finally on our way by 11:30 AM.

It took about 3 hours to get to Eureka, which is about 50 miles west of Whitefish. We hadn't pre-booked a motel, so from about East Glacier on, we were watching out for one, but everywhere was "no vacancy"! We got all the way to Eureka, and there wasn't a room to be found.


This is a picture of Dickie Lake, a beautiful blue colored lake about 20 minutes before Eureka. We drove by it three times in the last couple of days, and there were all kinds of boats on it, and water skiers, wake boards and etc. There's a campground at the far end and a small beach.

Anyway, we got to Eureka and there were only 2 motels, the first had no rooms, so we figured we might have to drive another hour to Fernie (the border is just 10 minutes from here) to get a room.
We decided to stop at the second motel and ask if they had a room before we left town. It's another Bates Motel looking place (for all you road trip fans), even has a casino attached to it. I went in, and at the truly Bates style motel desk in the lobby, asked if they had a room. Someone had just cancelled 5 minutes before and we were in luck! (We talked to some other guests later, who had pre-booked, and they said that all kinds of people had been to the motel trying to get a room, but the motel had been pre-booked and full for the weekend). We were the lucky ones!

Actually, the motel has been refurbished in all the rooms, and it is actually a fairly nice place. We decided to stay 2 nights. It was only $79.50 per night!!! Nothing anywhere near this price in Kalispel and Whitfish.

Eureka is actually a very nice little town, with an historic main street with buildings built in 1903 etc, and lots of interesting stores selling clothes, antiques, quilts, souvenirs, fancy household decorations and etc. There's also a really interesting historic village in the town park, where the main part of the quilt show was set up yesterday.

Friday afternoon and evening we went for a drive west along HWY 37 to Rexford where we ate supper at a pretty neat restaurant. The fried chicken dinner was huge and really good. All kinds of people there eating.

After supper we drove further west to what the waitress called the Big Bridge, to look for an Amish community that lived out there some where. The waitress said to cross the Big Bridge and turn right.




A few pictures of the big bridge,In the second picture you can see where Hwy. 37continues along the shore of the lake, which is the southern end of Lake Kookanusa. Hwy. 2 west crosses the same lake in BC. Anyway, you turn right off Hwy. 37, and drive across the bridge. At the other end of the bridge is an old Hwy. and you have to turn left or right. Left goes to Libby Dam, about 45 miles away along the lake, and right goes to West Kootenai a small town where the Amish settlement is. We went right, and drove for quite a ways, about 15 minutes along the lake, through beautiful forests till we got to West Kootenai. There were cottages all the way, and lots with RV's, lots more civilization than we would have guessed. You couldn't see most of them, unless you turned down the numerous access roads where all the cottage hamlets were. We drove down a couple.


The forests were full of these beautiful Larch trees. The bark looks really neat. We took this picture of an especially red one.


At West Kootenai there was a store/restaurant run by the Amish where we could have had supper. It was Friday night and their buffet night every week, and they had mashed potatoes, gravy, all kinds of stuff in the buffet. It looked good! And great looking pie for desert. Another time! There were quite a few people there. They serve meals from 9:00 till 6:00 everyday but Sunday. 

We went back to Eureka and had a huckleberry milkshake at the Jax cafe on mainstreet. It was fabulous!

 Mom says to end the Epistle, so I'll write about Saturday later.