The Connective Lens

The west of the story, day 5: The friendly ghost

In early July, I stowed away with my parents as they traveled to Idaho to visit Strong Family West — and this time, instead of flying, we made it a road trip.  Naturally, I took pictures.

Day 4 didn’t include anything that prompted me to pull out my camera, so you’ll never know what we did.  Ha!  Take that!

On Thursday we decided to enjoy a uniquely western feature: an Idaho ghost town named Silver City.  Like most ghost towns, Silver City is as close to a main road as the Detroit Lions are to winning a Super Bowl, so the last 20 miles of our trip took 45 minutes because they were on a winding road that provided somewhat disconcerting views like this:

As a further reminder that we were nowhere near the laziness of suburbia, farther down the road we were confronted with this, a most comforting sign:

Despite the magically disappearing roads and sternly-worded warning signs, we did manage to traverse the mountain and make it to Silver City.  Though it’s classified as a ghost town, Silver City isn’t devoid of life: it actually has a number of summer residents who live alongside the ghosts.  It’s a well-known fact that ghosts are terrible at structural maintenance; however, since the summer residents aren’t ghosts, many of the buildings are properly maintained, so the town gives a persisting glimpse into history.

This building houses a small store whose profits support Silver City Fire & Rescue.  Yes, even a ghost town has its own fire & rescue squad, and for good reason: in addition to the regular summer residents and their eminently flammable 150-year-old houses, Silver City sees a regular stream of tourists atop ATVs and dirt bikes during the summer.  As we all know, where there are people, there can be injuries…and where there are people on ATVs and dirt bikes, there can be more injuries.  SCF&R isn’t constantly busy, but when there’s a problem, its presence can make all the difference.

While I was browsing the SCF&R store, I was startled to see a familiar name on the wall:

She’s missing an L on the end of her name, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s close enough.

Hey, look!  Another picture of my dad being a tourist!

On the left side of that picture you can see a rusty old car baking in the sun; that sort of scene can make for nice pictures, so I walked over to get a closer look.

It turned out to be an old Packard that’s seen better days; as you can see in the picture, the car — which I just now decided to name Percy, because everybody knows alliteration makes life better — is missing its front end.  It’s obvious Percy Packard has been retired for a long, long time…but wait.  What’s that bright blue spot on the back end?

Yes, that’s right: a rusted car that’s long been baking in the Idaho sun has a spotless license plate that expired in 1985.  Somehow, that sort of bizarre time warp makes sense in a ghost town.

The large brown building in this picture is the Idaho Hotel.  The hotel was established in 1863 and closed in 1942; however, it reopened thirty years later, and to this day it’s still a functioning hotel (though parts of it are still being restored).  Staying in the Idaho Hotel is a bit like going back in time; there are showers and flush toilets, but since Silver City has no power, that’s the extent of the amenities the hotel offers.  (If you’re curious, the hotel site has pictures of the rooms.)

See that tall skinny structure jutting out of the ground to the right of the house?  That’s a two-story outhouse.

As the license plate shows, residents are proud to call Silver City home for a season.  Many of the homes have been owned by the same family for multiple generations; we talked to one resident whose Silver City home has been in her family for six generations.

Silver City’s old cemetery is just outside town, and we decided to make a stop there before we headed back to Mountain Home.

Come back later for Day 7, when we go to prison.  Seriously!

The west of the story, days 2 and 3: I’m a travelin’ man

One month ago, I stowed away with my parents as they traveled to Idaho to visit Strong Family West — and this time, instead of flying, we made it a road trip.  Naturally, I took pictures.

First: yes, I know you don’t remember seeing a Day 1 post; that’s because there wasn’t a Day 1 post.  We spent the first day driving from Michigan to Nebraska, and I didn’t take a single picture because AHHHH HOW CAN THERE POSSIBLY BE SO MUCH CORN IN THE WORLD MAKE IT STOP!

So, on to Day 2.  It started in Nebraska, a state that lives in constant fear of a blistering heat wave that would result in acres and acres of popcorn covering the landscape.  I know, I know: everybody makes jokes about Nebraska, so why am I joining the crowd?  Well, because I was egged on by this message over the door of a Nebraska gas station:

Further down the road we stopped at another gas station, and we were thrilled to encounter Nebraska football coaching legend Tom Osborne!

Oh, come on: as a Michigan fan, I’m obligated to make Nebraska football jokes, and I couldn’t pass on that option.

While doz…uh, driving through Nebraska, we were surprised to discover a non-traditional crop growing among the acres of corn.  It seems somebody buried a whole bunch of box fans and covered them with Miracle-Gro, and this was the result:

There’s no word yet on whether or not the fields of giant fans have succeeded in making the state any cooler.

After we escaped the ponderous clutches of Nebraska, we drove across southern Wyoming — travel tip: there are maybe three gas stations on I-80 in Wyoming — and ended up in Salt Lake City.  We didn’t have much time to see the SLC sights, so we chose to see the most famous sight in the city: Temple Square, featuring the LDS Temple.

The temple is very tall and very white, but I’m pretty sure that’s all it has in common with Conan O’Brien.  (Well, I guess it’s not actually white.  But I really wanted to use that joke, and it does look sort of white in the first photo.)

Hey, look!  Here’s a picture of my dad being a tourist!

Among the other buildings in Temple Square is Assembly Hall, a building that has absolutely nothing to do with the home of Indiana University basketball.  And if you stand in the right place, you get a strange view of that 132-year-old building with a decidedly not 132-year-old building looming over it.

Finally, as we were driving through downtown SLC, we spotted a sign that sends chills down the spines of the Woodward Dream Cruise organizers:

I understand the idea, but I’m confused about something: the top of the sign says “traffic congested area,” but the bottom of the sign specifies a time period that is typically associated with minimal traffic.  Is this sign schizophrenic, or do the residents of SLC really clog the streets between 11 P.M. and 4 A.M.?

Come back soon — or, you know, sometime — for Day 5, where I explain why there is no Day 4.  Oh, and some other stuff happened, too.