Travelogue: Before the Ranch

On our way between Stanley and the Diamond D, we made two stops. I'd never been to either place before, which is why this post doesn't get a "home again" title.

The first place was the Yankee Fork Dredge.  Although the dredge was around, along with the resulting ponds, when we were in Idaho, you couldn't tour it. 

That said, one summer weekend when I was 15-ish, I went camping with my friend Deena and her mom (Karen--the cook at the ranch the first year we went and the nicest lady ever), stepdad (Harry) & grandma. We went fishing in the dredge ponds, ducking whenever we saw a truck go by, because we only had one fishing license among us, and caught a good 30 or 40 fish.  Her mom cooked those fish for dinner, and it was one of the best meals I'd ever had. Her grandma found a puffball mushroom and blithely ate a piece, while we freaked out and waited for her to keel over dead. She was fine, of course. Karen & Harry slept in the camper, but the rest of us were in sleeping bags under the stars.  Until it started to downpour sometime after midnight, that is.  Deena didn't budge, but her grandma & I ran for the truck to get out of the rain. We all had a damn good time.

So the dredge was fun, although we didn't take the tour itself.  The guide was hanging around outside, so we talked with him for about 20 minutes.

Custer is a ghost town from a mining boom town in the 1800's.  We'd never gone, because it's after the road forks on the way to the Diamond D and I think it's improved substantially in the past few years. The museum has a lot of artifacts. We walked around for about half an hour, but could have spent much longer. There are several buildings that we didn't walk down to, partly because it was getting hot and partly because I was antsy to get up to the ranch itself.