Gems of the Palouse

There are so many little hidden towns in the Palouse. Each back in the day used to be bustling towns with pharmacys, movie theaters, restuarants and grocery stores. Now you drive through them without a thought of what they used to be like. I love to go for drives to find these old towns. One town, Elberton, just up the way from us is abandoned because it was flooded out so many times and all that is left is a great church and reminants of store foundations. At one time Elberton was the prune capital of the world! Hope they had a good sewer system!

Besides forgotten towns, there are plenty of old abandonded homesteads, churches, barns, houses and cemeteries. It is so much fun to poke around these places. They also have great fruit trees to be harvested and bulbs to dig up (I just like to take a few!) I like to think back on what it must have been like to live in the middle of nowhere, just you and miles and miles of fields. I don't think I could make it. I need people. But I guess if you have 25 hours worth of work to get done in 24 hours, you wouln't have much time for loneliness. Those homesteaders would laugh about our coffee dates and play dates, such free time we have now.

The great thing about Palouse, the town I live in, is that it is coming back alive. This once dumpy town is now bursting with new families and businesses.

There is another town in the Palouse that Im quite fond of is the town of Troy, Idaho. This town used to be a booming logging town. These old logging towns are centered around their mills, when the mill closes, the town closes. The mill in Troy has threatened to close down a few times but still stays open.

What I like about Troy is that it has TREES! You get so lonesome for trees when you live in the middle of wheat fields. I also love Troy because it has such a great coffee shop called The Filling Station. We met our good friends Ben and Sueann with their little one Coco for lunch today and then went for a walk on this great trail, which was covered in fairly deep snow so our walk didn't last too long.

Who wants to come down this spring and go exploring with me?