A Christmas Day Scramble

We've had a lot of fun on our vacation in Wallace. On Monday, Tom saw the missionaries at the library and invited them over for dinner. One of them is from Las Vegas and the other was from Eagle Mountain, Utah. I made tacos and one of the elders scarfed his down faster than Tom. I've never seen anyone eat so fast in my life.

Happy to have just eaten a home-cooked meal.

We had big plans for Tuesday. We hitched the snowmobiles to the back of the car and drove to Dobson Pass. We wrangled the snowmobiles off the trailer and sped away for a fun day of recreation. After only about 200 yards, Tom's snowmobile stopped working. It just stopped. Tom replaced the sparkplugs and fidgeted around with a bunch of other stuff but to no avail. We strapped his snowmobile to mine and dragged it back to the trailer. It was difficult and tricky to get it back on the trailer. We are extremely sad that our snowmobile days are over for now. I hope we can get it fixed ASAP.

Getting ready to head up. Two minutes later, it was over.

We drove home, feeling totally dejected. Plan B for the day was to hike up the North hill and try to get a good view of Wallace. It was a short but very steep hike.

Our house is the red one with the green roof. Center, 1/4 way up. Cute, no?

This was Christmas Eve so, once we got home, we chillaxed and watched a movie. I missed my kids more than words can even say.

Today, Christmas Day, was great. I made pumpkin pancakes and bacon, we opened our presents and then we decided to do another hike. I call it a "scramble" though, because most of the time we weren't following any trail--just going STRAIGHT UP the hillside. There's a section of an abandoned logging road that we can see from our front porch that I've always wanted to see. I figured the view of Wallace from this vantage point must be spectacular. Tom has tried many times to reach it by motorcycle but he's never made it.

There's a little bit of snow on the ground so we followed some tracks that a man and his dog must have made as late as yesterday. Possibly even this morning. We made it to our destination but it was HARD. The entire time, I was worried about how we were going to make it back down. Parts of the hike were so steep I felt like I was climbing a ladder straight up! It was very tricky to keep from sliding back down, down, down. We eventually made it to the logging road. And got this view of our fair city.

This is the most sun Wallace gets in the winter because of the south hill.

We decided NOT to try to go back the way we came so we followed a maze of logging tracks for a while. Eventually, we scrambled to another trail that led down a gulch. We found some more tracks, this time it was two people and a dog. We were just about to the South Fork of the Coeur d'Alene river when the trail stopped abruptly. We found these strange houses(?) close to the bottom.

This dugout was creeeeepy!

We were so close to Wallace at this point but had to climb up and around another hill until we got to a place where we could get off the mountain. This part of the hike had some parts that were more challenging than anything I've ever encountered. Tom tried to take pictures, but they didn't work out. Just try to imagine a plank of wood over a deep crevasse with a wire to hold onto while sliding on your bum across the plank. That was the only way across.

It was a great Christmas. I missed Paige, Chris, and the kids in Germany, I missed Allison and Tate in Canada, and I missed Eric and Tanya in Sammamish. Thank goodness Eric and Tanya will be visiting us tomorrow! We can't wait! More adventures ahead!