Old Mission State Park - Cataldo Mission

Recently we were asked to chaperone on a field trip for our daugher's class.  The field trip was to the Cataldo Mission, now called "Old Mission State Park".

I've forgotten a lot of the Idaho history that they taught in Boise grade school, and Northern Idaho always seemed such a long way from where I grew up...

Long story short, I learned a lot about the mission and the interesting story behind it. 

In the early 1800's, the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe had heard about certain powerful white medicine men who wore black robes and had great magic.  The "medicine men" were actually Catholic Jesuit Priests, a sect devoted to spreading the word of God through evangelism. 

The Indians sent several chiefs all the way to St. Louis to request their own priest.  In 1842 The Jesuits responded to the request and sent three priests to the area. Their first activity was to choose a location for a mission.  The first was along the St. Joe River, but the site was subject to flooding. In 1846 they chose the current location.

In 1850 the church was taken over by Father Antonio Ravalli, who began designing the new mission building.  He was Italian, had traveled Europe, and seen many of the great Cathedrals there.

He made sure that the building was constructed by the Indians themselves, so that they could feel part of the church. The frame of the building was built using only broad-axes and wood augers.  There were no lumber mills (or even roads) in the area at that time, so each board was made flat by hand from a log using only an axe.  The boards are held together by wooden pegs driven through holes.  Amazingly, even with this primitive construction, this is Idaho's oldest standing building! 

After framing, the walls were filled in with "wattle and daub", which is a blend of creek willows and mud.  The ceiling was initially white, but the indians wanted the ceiling color to more accurately represent the sky, so they created a stain from huckleberries and stained the center three ceiling panels blue.

Unfortunately in the 1920s, the indians were forced to move to a reservation, and the unique building of worship that they had created with their own hands was taken from them.  It was abandoned then, and fell into disrepair, until the Idaho Centennial commision decided to restore it in 1976.  Following the restoration, the mission building is still about 90% original.  On a happier note, the building has since been returned to the Coeur d'Alene Tribe.

Below are the two primitive tools used in the construction of this entire building.  Augur and broadaxe.

Beautiful handmade floor planks



Below is a statue carved by Father Antonio Ravalli.  It is not marble, but local pine.  Near the bottom is a photo of Father Ravalli.

 Father Ravalli made this elaborate candle holder from used cans.



 

A photo of the altar.  Everything is made from pine trees, and finished to look like marble and hardwoods.  The "wallpaper" is made from bits of fabric and old newspapers.

An overview from the back of the mission.  It's an awe-inspiring, hand-made frontier cathedral.



New Foal Down the Road

A couple of weeks ago, some neighbors of ours mentioned that there was a new baby horse in a nearby pasture.  It's not far from the house, but we don't go that way often, because we have to go the other direction to go into town.

We went there and there was a cute little foal sticking close to mom.  It was pretty difficult to get his picture, because he kept hiding behind the mare - probably an instinctive thing to protect against predators.  I took these with my cell camera, and the horses look short to me.  No idea how to fix this...



New job skilz!

Last month at work we were required to watch a 45 minute long video on how to plow snow.

Let's just say that watching the movie did not make me a proficient snowplow driver :) 

I spent about 4 hours last night plowing, taking a 1 hour break to start up the plant.  By the time I was finished with the start-up, the snow had piled up so deep it didn't look like I had even plowed!
Here's a view from inside, having pushed a huge pile off to the side of the parking lot.  

And here's a view of my new play toy.  Those white streaks are snowflakes falling past the camera during the shot.

Winter experiences

Well, with that last post I pretty much described the silly and not so fun part of living in cold country.  Time to balance that with some really cool stuff!

Like watching the eagles:

Yes I took this picture.  Too bad the damn camera focused on the hill instead of the bird :(

Interestingly when perched in a tree, the eagles always had their backs to us. Maybe that's eagle body language for "go away, jackass".

And there is also fun stuff you can do in the snow.  We haven't set aside a day for skiing yet, but we will.  For now, there is sledding!

And spectacular scenery...

So while it may be a challenge to get to work in the early morning...

The positives totally outweigh the negatives.  Happy New Year!

Snowfall

Sooo...

We got a couple of feet of snow over two days in mid-December.  Because I was on shift at the time, I didn't have much opportunity to clear it out of the driveway (which is long).  As a result, I only cleared a little of it before daylight ended and I needed to get ready for work.  As I left for work, the truck got stuck in the driveway.  I had to take the wife's AWD to work that night.

The following day I shoveled snow from under the truck's tires and pulled it back to the garage using the tractor.  I decided that I needed a lot of weight above the rear axles and some excellent snow tires - to replace the crappy snow tires that were on the truck.

I was still on shift however, so I continued to take the wife's car each night until I got a day off.  Meanwhile, the weather warmed up enough to melt some of the snow, then froze again.  So the snow that I didn't get removed is now clumpy and icy.  Due to the ice and the slope of the driveway it still sometimes requires 4WD to get the truck rolling after I back out of the garage.

We also had a really cold snap where it got down to 5 degrees overnight, but fortunately I wasn't on shift and just had to sleep through it!

The Christmas decorations that we used to put up in the yard in Bakersfield were totally buried in snow (which is now snow with a thick icy crust).  They also tripped the GFCI circuits.  Digging them out would be a total pain in the ass and would probably damage them.  So I guess they will remain encased in ice until spring thaws them out.

I used to have something like this in front of the house:

Now I have this:

On the bright side, it's nice not having to pay a lawn guy year round :)

One day, not long after the big snow, we were in Coeur d'Alene doing some last minute Christmas shopping.  When we returned home, we found that a snowplow had cleared the road in front of the house, leaving a 4 ft wall of snow blocking the driveway.  I hopped over it and got the tractor out while the rest of the family waited in the car on the street.  After about 10 minutes I had enough snow removed that the car could get over the hump without bottoming out.