Idaho News (Boise, Idaho Falls, Coeur d'Alene: deposit, metro area, areas)

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by Cavalry_Chief

Boy sprayed by cyanide explosive: ‘By the grace of God I’m still alive’

A little scary. Please watch out.

This incident caused a huge uproar this summer when it happened. The Dept. of Agriculture has since promised it would discontinue the setting of M-44s as coyote traps, and said the ones that were currently set had been removed.

I've seen them in the past. Once someone has seen one, they know what to avoid, but curiosity is one of the things that makes them work on coyotes. It's no different for a curious kid or a dog.

And though I'm sure the powers that be did their best to remove them, people are still people. It would be easy for anyone who set them to mis-record the setting, the time, or forget to do it altogether.

So, as Chief mentioned- Please watch out for your pets when rambling on the loose. And warn your children to stay away and not touch anything they see that looks out of place on your ramble. Teach them to come get you first instead.

I've seen boxes of dynamite that were stashed and forgotten, all kinds of old chemical containers, and lots of other hazardous stuff in wild and remote places all over this state.

It's very easy to think you are the first person to ever walk on some of our wildest ground, but the fact is many others have gone everywhere we go before us, for all kinds of reasons, and have done so for over 150 years.

Just because it's still wild does not mean it hasn't been explored, tested, abandoned, or discovered long ago. Our climate tends to preserve things a person would never think of. So the odds of finding some random artifact or relic in places that may seem strange to you are pretty good.

Please use a lot of caution examining anything when out in our wilds, especially if you don't know anything of an area's history. We have a lot more dangerous stuff out there than can be imagined.

My most alarming find was a 12 inch unexploded naval cannon round, out on the fringe of the Arco desert when I was a teen. I didn't know at the time that that area of the desert was once used as a naval gun testing site, where all the Navy's most powerful battleship guns were test fired before they went off to be installed on ships.

That shell was a stray, far out of the normal gunnery range. I reported it, and never knew why it was there or what happened to it.

The other great discovery I made was a year later, when fishing. I saw some bones sticking out of a cut bank on the creek I was fishing, and a friend and I dug them out and brought them home.
I put them on top of an upright freezer that was by our back door, and forgot to tell my mother about them. I left home soon afterwards to join the military, but I intended to take them down to the archeology dept. at ISU and have them examined after I was discharged.

Came home to learn Mom had given them to our dogs to chew. They were long gone. 3 vertebrae.

But the bones must have come from a mammoth or other Pleistocene mammal that was as large. They were enormous! Much, much bigger than a cow's, or an elk's, or a buffalo's. This country was once full of extinct large mammals during that period.

Goes to show that you'll never know what you will find. For sure, discoveries won't all be dangerous, but some are, while other are just marvelous things. The more you come to know an area's history, the more old cool stuff you might find.

A cousin makes a practice of walking slowly and looking down when he goes out fishing. He's learned over time that all his favorite fishing holes are frequently the same spots our tribes once fished, and he picks up pocketfuls of arrowheads and other flint tools.

The finds make perfect sense; the tribes seldom used fishing poles like we do. They set out hook lines, or nets, or speared the fish, and the guys would often wait all day for fish to come to a good hole. They needed something to while away that time, so they would knap flint and make tools while they were waiting, much like a modern fisherman might read a book in the heat of the day when the fish weren't biting.

My cousin often looks for artifacts on the tops of hills, ridges, and outcroppings. The Indians would go to high spots to look for game, and once there would stay all day, just watching. A good lookout was used year after year when the tribe moved in on hunting trips.
He said there's often a lot of flint tools and other stuff on these spots.

[f5fstop]

Yes, that sure is old news.

[banjomike]

4 inches of snow in my back yard yesterday morning.

Say hi to winter. Indian summer is over.

I usually put my winter tires on in November, but I'm going to do it tomorrow; I may be wrong, but I think this winter will start earlier than usual this year. I could always be wrong, but I don't like to take chances when it comes to getting stuck, even when I know the snow will melt off eventually.

[Cnynrat]

We've had some snow in the mountains up here, and a few reports of snow at lower elevations but it's pretty spotty. So far we've only had rain and some hail at our place, and temps are forecast to be headed into the low 60's tomorrow. Sort of a little reprise of the best of fall weather. We're fairly close to Lake Pend Oreille, and I think that moderates our temperatures somewhat.

Dave

[TohobitPeak]

Originally Posted by banjomike

4 inches of snow in my back yard yesterday morning.

Say hi to winter. Indian summer is over.

I usually put my winter tires on in November, but I'm going to do it tomorrow; I may be wrong, but I think this winter will start earlier than usual this year. I could always be wrong, but I don't like to take chances when it comes to getting stuck, even when I know the snow will melt off eventually.

Yeah, I heard from family that there was a surprise of snow over there. This weekend in Boise has been gorgeous with deep blue skies and somewhat warm temps after the rain we had late last week. It is going to get into the 70's here this week before dropping back down into the 50's with rain this weekend. There's some snow already up on Shafer above the city and McCall and Stanley have had impressive amounts of snow for this time of year.

So far in Boise it is setting up to be a great Autumn.

[A2Z_Adventures]

Originally Posted by banjomike

Just because it's still wild does not mean it hasn't been explored, tested, abandoned, or discovered long ago. Our climate tends to preserve things a person would never think of. So the odds of finding some random artifact or relic in places that may seem strange to you are pretty good.

I find this so interesting... We spent quite a bit of time around the lakes and rivers of North Idaho this summer and discovered that in the Silver Valley, the old way of disposing of things were just dumping them on the side of the road, into the rivers or burning it. One of the fellows I met, said "Don't stir up that lot you bought riverside too much, you might not like what you find" referring to batteries and all sorts of chemicals that people are getting when they buy into riverside lots.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by A2Z_Adventures

I find this so interesting... We spent quite a bit of time around the lakes and rivers of North Idaho this summer and discovered that in the Silver Valley, the old way of disposing of things were just dumping them on the side of the road, into the rivers or burning it. One of the fellows I met, said "Don't stir up that lot you bought riverside too much, you might not like what you find" referring to batteries and all sorts of chemicals that people are getting when they buy into riverside lots.

Yup.
Nature takes over pretty quickly and covers a lot of old stuff up.

When out exploring, it's very easy to think you are the first person to ever step on this remote ground, especially when there is no one else around for many miles.

But the fact is a lot of people have trod on that same ground in the past over many, many years.

Not all of the old junk is contaminated or hazardous, but you never really know what you will come across.

After living here for a while, folks may learn about some of the old things and how they were disposed of. Here in Idaho Falls, there are several thousand old crank telephones supposedly lying in a hole in the bottom of the river just north of the Broadway bridge, and at least a hundred old slot machines that were dumped in the river when they were outlawed in the early 50s.

Rivers were a fast disposal of things the owners wanted never to be used again, as were all bodies of water. Old garbage dumps were sometimes just scrapes, shallow little pits where the garbage was burned or just dumped, and then covered over with only a few inches of soil.

Once covered though, our dry climate tends to preserve the old junk. And a lot of the old dumps were mined by wildlife looking for a easy dinner, so a lot of old garbage got scattered around long after it was dumped.

Some of our old timber and mining camps are completely gone, with no good records left that describe them, but the garbage that was left behind is still there, along with God Only Knows what else. A lot of machinery and related stuff was so difficult to transport into an area that it was just abandoned when the people left.

[Syringaloid]

Idaho's first medical school gears up for thousands of applicants | ICOM | Idaho Statesman

[Clark Fork Fantast]

https://idahostatejournal.com/news/l...e44b6a593.html

It happened last June, but apparently the police report has just been released. What a sad, mysterious story.

[Syringaloid]

Originally Posted by Clark Fork Fantast

https://idahostatejournal.com/news/l...e44b6a593.html

It happened last June, but apparently the police report has just been released. What a sad, mysterious story.

That was horrible, shocked the entire city.