When you are nearly to Priest River there's a unique round house, built out of stone, on the other side of the river. In a rock cut on the road just before you get to that house, there are formations of Strawberry Gneiss and Sillimanite Gneiss. The red in the rock is the "Strawberry" Gneiss which contains manganese.
It was not a great day for photos, but I did get a few at a couple of locations on Priest Lake.
On Sunday we decided to drive to Metaline Falls. We would drive up the east side of the Pend Oreille River, cross over at Metaline Falls and head back to Newport on Highway 20. This area was the Pacific Ocean before the land mass that is now Oregon and Washington came to join the North American continent.
Our first stop was at the Manreesa Grotto on the Kalispell Reservation, which is across the river from Usk.
The geology at this location is a sandstone formation created in a glacial lake. The grotto was carved out of the sandstone by wave action much later.
This shows cobblestones in the sandstone.
The holes are where the stones have fallen out of the sandstone.
This would have been a good place to stay warm and dry a couple of hundred years ago.... It would have worked on Sunday too, but there wasn't a campfire.
It has a nice view of the river too.
Jon was pointing out that these large holes were carved out by the wave action.
We drove north towards Sullivan Lake which was really unique. The lake had no shoreline except at the west end. The mountains surrounded it and came down to the edge of the lake. There was just enough room for a narrow road around it, which means it's totally undeveloped. At the west end their was a nice campground and park. Just past this location we had to decide whether to drive ten more miles north into Canada or turn south. It was 5:15 p.m. so we decided Canada would have to wait for another day.
As we drove on towards Metaline Falls our next stop was the Mill Pond site.
In 1910 Lewis Larsen, a Danish immigrant, discovered the limestone rock here. The limestone could be used to make cement. The Mill Pond Flume carried water down to Metaline Falls to generate electricity for the town and the cement plant.
The Mill Pond.
I think this Historic Site was near Cusick. It's difficult to imagine what it was like when David Thompson traveled the river in his canoe. What sights he must have seen and how difficult the journeys must have been.
