Heyburn State Park on Chatcolet Lake
Heyburn State Park on Chatcolet Lake
June 28, 2007.
We are staying in Coeur
d'Alene at Blackwell
Island RV Resort $30 for paved interior roads, FHU including
cable and wifi. This is a top notch RV park that even allows you to
wash your RV on site. Now that is something you do not see very often.
Today we are traveling north on US 95 between Lewiston, Idaho
and Coeur
d'Alene, Idaho in our motorhome. Most of this drive is through
prairie farms consisting of rolling hills and grain fields. However,
two completely different ecosystems are saved for the public in the
form of State Parks.
We dropped the motorhome in a roadside picnic area and took the Saturn
to visit McCroskey
State Park where we took the famous Skyline
Drive.
After visiting McCroskey
State Park and Skyline
Drive we returned to the motorhome and continued on our journey
toward Coeur
d'Alene. We had one more stop to make before arriving in Coeur
d'Alene and that was Plummer Creek Interpretive Area near
Plummer, Idaho. I had information
from somewhere about Plummer Creek being an area where they have saved
a large grove (is grove the correct word) of 400 year-old Ponderosa
Pine trees.
We located a place to drop the motorhome while we went exploring
in the Saturn. This time things did not work out as planned. We never
really located "Plummer Creek Interpretive Area" although
we came close. It seems that Plummer Creek is only accessible via
a walking or bike path which is 7-miles long. It appears that one
can access the area from near the city of Plummer and on the eastern
end of the trail on Heyburn Road in Heyburn State Park.
Heyburn State Park on Chatcolet Lake
While trying to locate a road (that didn't exist) we drove through
portions of Heyburn
State Park on Chatcolet Lake 5-miles east of Plummer, Idaho.
This part of the lake was providing excellent waterfowl habitat.
I had read about some 400-year old ponderosa pine trees in this area
but did not realize that you could only reach them via a 7-mile walking
trail. It is certainly amazing how some details are conveniently left
out when promoting an area.
Old growth ponderosa pine
We located the east end of the trail that takes you to the 400 year
old ponderosa pine trees but this is the only "old growth"
ponderosa pines we could spot.
Old growth Ponderosa Pines
The 400-year old ponderosa pines must be somewhere along the walking/biking
trail even though there was no indication, of any kind, that this
old grove of Ponderosa Pines even existed.
The bottom line of this experience is that no one hits a home run
with every try. The trail appeared to be a paved bike path so they
could possibly be accessed with bicycles.
Until next time remember how good life is.
Mike & Joyce Hendrix
Mike
& Joyce Hendrix who we are
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