Big Eddy calls

We went on a brief geocaching outing yesterday---well, it would be brief by Bill's standards---just over three hours. As he does with fishing, Bill stays out well after dark on many of his geocaching adventures.

Yesterday, however, he had to return for a tuba practice at the Presbyterian Church. He's teaming up with some other brass players for a Lenten performance of some sort. Must be ecumenical because the Lutheran minister is involved.

While Bill is addicted to journaling, GPS techno stuff and observing the surrounding eco-systems, I go along on these outings for the ride, the hike and an escape from my workaholicism. Yesterday's abbreviated geocache adventure took us east to Montana and areas where our family often went on Sunday drives back in the '50s and '60s.

Kids were scrunched in the back seat and told to "count the deer" while my dad pursued little-known side roads and scared the beejeebers out of my mother. One time when we ended up underneath a power line on some remote hilltop, she almost went into labor with my little sister Laurie. Laurie chose to wait, however, because she didn't like high-mountain roads either.

Anyway, the Lovemobile took us yesterday to a campground along the Clark Fork River called Big Eddy. I've driven by it at least a hundred times and never knew it existed. While Bill searched out his cache hidden beneath needles at the base of a huge Ponderosa, I took off on a trail along the river.

An exuberant stream bubbling from the hillside and feeding into the Clark Fork provided a turnaround point. By the time I returned to the car, Bill had found his first cache, put there by Grandpapa, and was ready to head for Bull River to search for the other.

This time we traveled up the Bull River highway for a few miles before turning off on the East Fork Road, where our destination was an historic ranger station two miles away. Though the snow was deeper than we're seeing in Sandpoint, the road remained a bit icy but passable.

We found the ranger station, built by a good friend of Theodore Roosevelt's and considered the oldest on the Kootenai National Forest. Surrounding informative signs noted that the first ranger's wife created good feelings around the area through her gracious hospitality. The Forest Service and locals are restoring the site. They've even planted a new orchard to replace those fruit trees from the early 1900s, which have died off.

Our little adventure yesterday into Western Montana's beauty and its past proves that the sport of geocaching (www.geocaching.com) reaches far beyond a GPS and a map. Definitely fun stuff.