I don't really know how many times I have seen or photographed this scene.
It's been often.
Somewhere in my collection, there's a snapshot of my brother and me standing alongside the Moyie River.
I think I was single digits when that photo was taken.
Yesterday when Bill said, "If you don't want to do something, I think I'll go fishing on the Moyie."
"I do want to do something," I responded. "Let's take the Moyie/Meadow Creek loop drive."
"The Bob Gooby drive?" Bill asked.
"Yes," I said. The other day when Bob Gooby came to visit he told me that he had taken that loop a while back with driving help from his senior companion.
So, of course, in the anals of the Love house from now on, it will be deemed the "Bob Gooby" drive. Bill and I often like to attach our own monikers to events or places we visit.
And, longtime family friend Bob Gooby deserves some attention among our adventures.
And, so after I finished canning some applesauce and freezing some chard, we set off for the same place we have driven year after year, all seasons of those years.
I could probably write another book about the countless family and extended family adventures and longtime family history associated with the Moyie and with Meadow Creek, where my dad's mother taught in a one-room school house back in the 1920s.
I also thought about our camping trip to Meadow Creek Campground with sisters Barbara and Laurie, with Willie and Debbie and with at least one dog per person. Can't remember if there were seven or eight dogs on that adventure.
We sure had fun, though.
Yesterday, a campground filled with other tenants and maybe a few dogs was alive with tales unfolding for the family history books.
I also thought later in our trip, as I always do while going past Feist Creek Falls Restaurant near East Port, about the last back-woods drive on a gorgeous fall day I took with my mother.
Still hard not to shed a tear thinking about that treasured day.
There is SO much to see on that loop drive and there are SO many options.
One option we chose took us up the Deer Ridge Road to Deer Ridge Lookout----all country where our dad did a lot of hunting way back when.
I could not ever remember going to the lookout, even though we've driven the road many times on pretty fall days.
Bill insisted that we had gone there several years ago.
Upon arrival, we wasted no time climbing a series of stairs to the top of the structure where we could peek inside at the beds and benches and other essentials for folks inhabiting a lookout during the summers.
We also surveyed the mountaintops and ridges, and at one point, Bill mentioned a peak off to the south where he, Willie, Debbie and Annie had hiked on a geocaching adventure a few weekends ago.
As we walked the perimeter, Bill pointed out a pulley which could be used for lifting items up to the living quarters.
He also suggested that he might just reserve a night in the lookout next year and then asked if I'd like to come.
At the time, I was pursuing my route toward descending the stairs, as my chronic phobia for heights was beginning to set in.
"No," I said, "I've already spent enough time up here."
By the time I reached the last step, the 4-wheelers we'd heard from the tower had arrived at the parking lot.
Bill was still checking out stuff at the tower while I walked up and said hello to four men who had been touring other back roads in the area.
When I asked where they were from, one said Eastport; then another said, "You were a teacher."
Yes, but I did not teach Tim Blankenship, who graduated from Sandpoint High in 1985, so in my mind, it was our first meeting.
Turns out Tim has just retired from a career at Sewell Engineering. His friends were from Moscow, Coeur d'Alene and Eastport, all very nice.
And so, as always it seems, our adventure once more took us back to memories of past times but also added a new tale for a future return.
Plus, the trip was beautiful, as always.
I told Bill he could go fishing today if he wants cuz the Seahawks are playing and there's lawn to mow.
Happy Sunday.
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