Taco Salad of Troy

We had completed our assignment. We had the afternoon to play. Some good ribs awaited us at the Clark Fork Bistro, or so we thought. The plan was that when Debbie and I had dumped the last wheelbarrow load of horse apples into the Tibbs Arabian poop pile, we'd clean up and head toward Montana for an afternoon of geocaching.

Every morning and night for four days, we'd seen that the needs of 11 horses were met while Barbara and Laurie competed with their remaining two at the annual Spokane show. During this time, Willie and Debbie had also slept at Colburn so that Mother would not be alone at night.

With our job done, the thought of an open-ended afternoon sounded pretty appealing, and Bill had mentioned the good ribs at the Bistro. The plan changed slightly, though, as we rolled through Clark Fork and noticed the Bistro wasn't open on this day.

So, we moved on to the scenic Bull River Highway, which connects HWY 200 with HWY 2 while offering travelers breath-taking views of the beautiful and rugged Cabinet Mountains and crystal clear streams meandering through lush, green farm fields.

Our first destination was the Ross Creek Cedars where a cache lay hidden in the trunk of an ancient tree. Our shock, upon arriving, was that this place has experienced "discovery" like so much of our area. We felt lucky to find a parking space and remembered our last trip here ten years ago on a Fourth of July afternoon when we'd seen maybe half a dozen cars during our entire two-hour stay.

Crowds of recreationalists were gathered in small clumps throughout the parking lot, chatting or setting off into different directions. As we headed down the trail, I was struck with the lack of solitude. In fact, I recall very few moments when we couldn't spot another group of visitors gazing upward toward the tops of the giant trees.

We ran into a few familiar faces and enjoyed short visits with them. We also found the geocache hidden in an opening at the bottom of dead tree which must have been at least six feet in diameter. Willie recorded the find in the logbook. I took a package of band aides and Bill replaced it with a plastic match container while Debbie read through the logbook with a tiny flashlight.

While heading back to the car, another phenomenon of the population boom to the quiet, off-the-road areas, which we've enjoyed virtually to ourselves for entire lifetimes, hit hard. More than half the people we encountered along the trail refused to say hello or even make eye contact. That hurts.

Another two geocaches awaited us near HWY 2. The first one took us up a steep trail where we ran into another geocacher from Bonners Ferry. Two Bugs is a Church of Christ minister and school bus driver.

His wife was in Virginia so he'd spent this whole day searching for a long list of caches along the Kootenai River and old HWY 2. He had not found this one and seemed disappointed when he heard that I'd discovered it in the stump without even using a GPS.

We enjoyed visiting, then left him to return the container of goodies to its stump and headed for the final cache at the HWY 2 rest stop east of Troy. This one was located on the right side of a fallen log. Well, when we got into the mosquito-rich woods, a myriad of fallen logs awaited us.

After a few minutes, though, Willie hollered, "Got a find!" Just as he announced his discovery, Two Bugs suddenly appeared in our mosquito zone, once again disappointed he hadn't found it himself. He seemed happy, however, to enjoy a bit more geocaching chat with Bill. It appeared mutual.

By then, it was 6:15 and time to eat. We chose the Silver Spur Restaurant in Troy. Our timing was good cuz graduation had drawn most of the population to the school, and the restaurant was relatively empty. I asked the waitress to appraise the restaurant's taco salad offering. She said she'd worked there only a month, but assured me there'd be salsa and sour cream along with other goodies.

Sure enough, it beat the one at the Fireside Inn on Mother's Day, hands down. In fact, I couldn't eat it all. Granted, Bill had to settle for fish and chips rather than ribs, and we had no entertainment other than scaring ourselves by looking into the fancy mirror next to our table. But, we did enjoy a sumptuous meal at the Silver Spur.

Our afternoon in the Big Sky country turned out well, but now, all good things must end. In a few minutes, Willie will take Debbie to the airport for her flight back to Boise. In a month, though, it's likely she'll be up this way permanently, so we can enjoy many more memorable Sunday outings.

And, I can continue my quest of critiquing the region's taco salads.