My Trip to Challis, ID

I arrived at the home of Shawna and Angela Bridges. It was a sunny day but cold. They have a little snow on the ground. I went to the Challis Public Library with them on my second day here. They have a small library, but the librarian was very helpful as the books they both wanted to check out were not available. She got on to the computer to see if she could request it from a different library. Both Shawna and Angela wanted books from the American Girl Collection. This is the series they're reading. The librarian let them know the books would be here in a few days and she would call them when they arrived.

The next few days we just hung out at home, as the girls had school. Except for Monday and Tuesday afternoon they both bowl. Angela’s team name is Pins Heads. She bowls on Mondays and Shawna's team name is Popeye's. She bowls on Tuesdays. It was fun watching them bowl.
It has snowed a little at night since I've been here, but they really don't have a lot of snow on the ground. The sun has been out most of the day.

Saturday, February 12, 2010, we drove up to Sunbeam and up the Yankee Fork to see the old dredge. On our way up highway 75 we went through the small town of Clayton (population 56). We stopped and looked in the windows of the Merc (The Clayton Museum). It's closed till summer. They had a lot of interesting things inside. From here we continued up river till we came to Sunbeam, Idaho, This is where we turned off the highway & headed up Yankee Fork to the old dredge. The old ghost towns of Bonanza and Custer are along this road. Not much is left of Bonanza, only a couple of buildings that have fallen due to the heavy snow.

Custer has more buildings to it & is preserved better. But we couldn’t drive into Custer as the snow was too deep and no one wanted to walk the 1 ½ miles through the snow to go see it. This road is also called the Custer Byway. If you follow it all the way you'll end up on Main Street, Challis. It was the old wagon road between Sunbeam and Challis before Highway 75 was built.
In the summer there is a fest called Custer Days, where the Forest Service employees and volunteers dress in 1800 attire. They have demonstrations, the old Merc has items for sale, the few old homes and other building are open to the public, and they have a short movie about the area. We then drove on up the Stanley, ID (population 26) for lunch at the local lodge. After a day of playing in the snow and warm food in our tummies everyone slept on the way home except for Grandma as she was driving.

For the next week or so we just hung around the house and played. The weather wasn't very nice and no one really wanted to get out much.

Before I left to go back home we did go to the Land of the Yankee Fork Interpretative Center here in Challis. The girls got to dress up in 1800 era dresses for some pictures. We took pictures in front of some items you'd find in a dry goods store. They were able to hold a couple of old dolls in their arms with me in the middle. I got my picture taken top of an old saddle with them. Then we went over to a fainting couch, we sat down in front of a couple of gold pans, an old dentist chair, a slush box (used for panning gold), and finally we were allowed to sit at an old salon table (complete with poker cards, and old beer bottles). I was hanging off the edge of the table. We had a great time here looking at all the items in the museum.