Tuesday gremlins and Yaak

Well, as often happens, I've been sitting here for nearly an hour, downloading photos from my digital camera, only to have the blogger gods send their wrath on me. Occasionally, for no clear reason, pictures don't appear on the blog, even after all steps have been followed. In other cases, every single one appears with no problem.

Anyway, I was going to post some photos of Yaak Falls in Montana. Annie and I went there Saturday on a geocaching/site seeing trip. She found her first-ever cache in Montana and then found her second. Both were alongside HWY 2 near the Yaak Forest Service campground. With that goal accomplished, we decided to head up the highway to the remote little village of Yaak, which definitely has an "off-the-grid" feel.

It's home to the Dirty Shame Saloon and the Yaak Mercantile. We learned that the Dirty Shame is temporarily closed because the new owner's husband had to have open-heart surgery. She bought it from Willie's husband after Willie died. My friend Chris Moon and I met Willie a few years ago on one of our day-long drive and "Yak" excursions. We drove to Trout Creek, had some breakfast at Katy Jack's where the "ugly waitress" has a tummy so big his buttons almost pop in your face when he comes to serve coffee.

Chris and I worked for the Forest Service engineers, so we took a nostalgic trip from Trout Creek over the Vermillion River Road (where we had conducted traffic surveys 30 years before). Back in those days, we just went to the summit, turned around and came back. On our visit a few years ago, we went on over the mountains and came out east of Troy. So, then it was on to Yaak, where we had a hamburger and listened to Willie, the proprietor, tell her stories.

She was a rough, tough ol' gal. Well, at least the first part was right; we found out during the conversation she wasn't quite as old as she looked. Apparently, life running a saloon had aged Willie. She was the same age as Chris but looked like she'd lived 30 hard years longer. We learned a couple of years ago that Willie had died of cancer. Her husband apparently sold out to the new gal.

While asking about the Dirty Shame on Saturday, we learned from the Yaak Mercantile clerk that things had changed at the saloon. Remodeled with carpet. No smoking, and . . .
"There'll be no more dancing on the tables," the clerk told us.

We bought our treats and used the bathroom in the mercantile bar where a large pack of motorcycle riders were hanging out. We'd seen some of them down at the falls. It's hard not to stop there because those falls pull you in. They're huge and magnificent, and there is one spot where you stand over them and know that it wouldn't be a good idea to get too near the edge. The water flowing below is about as hypnotic as it comes.

Annie snapped lots of photos with her big fancy camera, and I caught a few with mine. If I'm lucky, when I try one more time to post a picture or two, maybe the shots will take up the thousand more words I'd have to write to describe just how pretty Yaak Falls is.

Note: Well, I tried again, but the gremlins won. You'll just have to check out Annie's blog at (www.nnlove.blogspot.com) in the next couple of days. I'm sure she'll have more luck than I did this morning.