Today we went up to Schweitzer. It’s always interesting to go up Schweitzer Mountain Road because it brings back a lot of memories. When we first moved to Sandpoint, we rented a ski cabin on Schweitzer for the month of June while our house was being completed.
We spent a lot of time driving up and down the road, not just to do errands like get groceries, but also because we were helping with some of the work on our house. I stained about 7,000 pieces of hemlock wood trim, which now are being used as baseboards or around windows and doors in this place. (Suffice it to say that there was a LOT of work to be done before we could move in.)
Plus, one of our cats got sick almost the moment we arrived in Sandpoint, and I had many stressful drives down the mountain with my cat next to me yowling away in her kitty carrier on the way down to the vet.
Because we spent so much time winding our way up and down the mountain, over the course of the month we were living up there, we started naming the various switchbacks along the road.
One corner that used to have sort of clearing, we termed “deer meadow” because we almost always saw deer grazing in that spot. (Interestingly, when we’ve driven up since that time, we almost never see deer there.)
Another switchback, we termed Skippy’s corner because of a young brown bear we used to see. That year a mother bear and her two cubs were living nearby. One cub was dark brown, but Skippy was the color of yes, you guessed it, peanut butter.
Although we obviously do know the road, we don’t drive it particularly quickly, especially in winter. So if you find some loser tailgating you down the road after a ski trip, I can report it’s definitely not us.
Today, as we followed an incredibly slow minivan from Kootenai County, one of those tailgating losers in a red Jeep actually went around and almost caused a crash. However, we were contently following the slowpoke, since it gave us quite a bit of time to reflect upon each switchback again.
I like to think that Skippy is now an old bear hibernating out there somewhere.