A Rapid Lightning--Gold Creek Loop Drive

It's kinda turned into the new stomping grounds for us.

After nearly 12 years of living out here in Selle, I don't have enough fingers or maybe even toes to count the trips I make up Rapid Lightning or Gold Creek roads these days.  

Count in the Grouse Creek Road, too, but I didn't go there yesterday. 

Before our move to Selle, Baldy and Schweitzer served as our "back yard" roaming places for most of my life, but that has all changed.  

I probably need only one handful of fingers to count the trips I make up those roads during any given year.

Yesterday, when the sun came out on what was supposed to be a rainy day AND when it stuck around with a lot of brilliant blue sky, I decided to take advantage of the pleasant weather surprise. 

So, I climbed in the car with my camera and took off, leaving our muddy road behind.  

One of my favorite short road trips involves heading up either Gold Creek or Rapid Lightning Creek Road to make the loop which always takes me back to Colburn Culver Road. 

It's never too long, and almost always, there are funky and fun sights along the way. 

What made the hour-long drive---with coffee and fresh-bakes white chocolate macadamia nut cookies from the Pack River Store---especially nice was all the pure white, clean snow. 

Now, down here on the flats, we have pretty dirty snow, mainly because it's been warm for several days, and after plowing from Wednesday sloppy snow-rain event, a lot of dirt, sod, sand and rocks has been mixed into the snow berms.  

Up those roads leading toward the Cabinet Mountains, however, nobody plows or even gets near the marshmallow-like snow toppings on boulders rising out of the beautiful meandering near the roadsides. 

So, things are, for the most part, pretty and, in some places, even gloriously beautiful along the Gold Creek and Rapid Lightning Creek roadsides.

Yesterday's afternoon drive through territory, where logging railroads brought logs down from the mountains and where my dad's mother taught in a one-room school house several decades ago, turned out to be quite satisfying, as it usually does any season of the year.  

Enjoy the photos, and Happy Friday and, for our friends Down Under, "Happy Australia Day!"  

For us it's also "Say Hello to Swiss Miss Day," so I think it's gonna be fun.