I gave the assignment this week. Three simple words: Coeur d'Alene Lake. You can read Silver Valley Girl's here and Raymond Pert's soon. |
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Arrow Point, Turner Bay, Blue Creek Bay, The Shady Rest, and the original Tony's are a few. Squaw Bay, Camp N-Sid-Sen, Camp Easton, Templins, and Rockford Bay still rattle around in my memory. Some of the names were on signs we'd see while traveling to Moscow. Others were names friends would mention in talking about their lake places. We didn't have a lake place , but did visit a float house at Beauty Bay the day I learned to water ski. TA's family had a tiny Terry trailer that was parked at Arrow Point each summer for vacation. CL went to Arrow Point and seemed to water ski every day of the summer. Arrow Point seemed like a mystical place when I was a child.
The natural beauty of the lake remains. It doesn't matter which mile of the 109 miles of lake shore I drive, a beautiful photo image of the blue lake is waiting. Somewhere along the way the lake lost the rustic feel beyond the shoreline. People with money discovered places along the lake and put in gated communities . A guy named Duane decided to capitalize on the lake, the shoreline, and the tour boats and has turned the Coeur d'Alene end of the lake into a destination spot. Arrow Point is known more now for Derailers which are served in a large white bucket with lots of straws. More people visit Worley for the casino or the golf course than the bays that surround it. Now Kid Island Bay is on the map again because Dennis Franz purchased the land.
When I returned to Camp N-Sid-Sen last summer for a writing retreat it was closer to what I remembered places on Coeur d'Alene Lake to be from my youth. The Chaffee Chapel was there. The lake shore was untouched by speed boats, mansions, slips for a hundred boats. There were still canoes and orange life jackets. The same is true at Wolf Lodge Bay. The eagles still have places to feed because there aren't condos, resorts, and boat slips that fill the bay. I think some of the rustic float houses are still at Beauty Bay. Camp Easton, a camp for Boy Scouts, is still in the same spot, but expanded to both sides of the highway close to Turner Bay. I am always guaranteed of seeing One Shot Charlie's in Harrison.
The Coeur d'Alene and St. Joe Rivers still spill into this massive lake. The native people still own the southern third of the lake.I still yearn for the smell of pine needles, lake water, and campfire smoke. There are still a few places untouched by progress that take me back to that rustic time as I continue to pull out the water stained map and study the geography of Coeur d'Alene Lake.
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I actually worked at Camp Neewahlu the summer of 1981' I was the camp gopher, ran the Boston whaler back and forth, did all the odd jobs. My nickname at the damp was Flash. This brought back old memories of the best summer job I ever had. Thank you ver much.
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