Fun at Farragut SP

When you're with the WINs, the activities never stop.  One day we packed lunches and toys and caravaned to Farragut State Park, about 20 north of Coeur D'Alene, Idaho.  Farragut is located at the south end of Lake Pend Oreille, another huge lake.  It's 43 miles long and 1,150 deep in some places.  It has an interesting history, but first it's time to play.

Biking

Hiking

And kayaking

Now for the history - What is now the state park was used during WW II as a navel training base.  Since the lake is so deep, we were under the mistaken impression that they tested submarines there.  Of course the major question was, "How did they get the subs there?"  Actually, there were no subs, but the truth is pretty amazing nonetheless.  During the 30 months of its existence, 293,381 sailors received basic training at the Farragut facility.  It was also used as a prisoner of war camp with 900 Germans who worked as gardeners and maintenance men.  The Navy still maintains a submarine research center at nearby Bayview, the Acoustic Research Detachment.  We toured the Museum at the Brig which was interesting and had a terrific movie which I enjoyed.

This unique sailor bust commemorates all the recruits who trained here.

You have to get close to fully appreciate how unusual it is.

We also took a ride through cute little Bayview.  Built on the hilly shore of the lake, some of the residents got pretty creative.

We stayed in Hayden, ID, just north of Coeur D'Alene at an Eagles lodge.  It's a real bargain at $5 a night and there are some electrical hookups, mostly 20amp.  Since, once again, we arrived late, we were on our own. You have to be an Eagle or a guest of one, but some of us are Eagles.  (I'm still playing catch-up with the blog, so I can pass along the good news that we later moved into a spot with electric.  Luckily our air conditioner works fine on 20 amp, because it's still hot.  That's one of the advantages of having a 30' rig with only one AC unit.)