Eagle City Park

Driving home from our bike ride along the Route of the Hiawatha gave us the idea to have our next adventure near Wallace, Idaho. Being an old mining town, there's a lot of history to check out and learn about. After some internet research, I learned about a few other mining ghost towns in that area, including Eagle City. With no obvious remains or location, we ended up tent camping on private property at a place called Eagle City Park.

We started our stay with a tour of the place by our camp host, Peewee. Now, before we met Peewee, we had concerns about what kind of place we were staying at. Well, Peewee turned out to be the nicest and most informative camp host I've ever met! He had TONS of suggestions on where to eat, what to investigate in the surrounding ghost towns and where to dig for gold on the property. :) He said "You find it, you keep it." Good enough for me!

The next day we hiked into Settler's Cedar Grove. A one mile trail where the deeper you go in, the larger the trees get...some as big as six feet in diameter!
See what I mean??
After our morning hike we had lunch in Murray at the Spragpole and toured the free museum. We soon learned that the six foot diameter trees were upwards of 1,000 years old, if not more. Insane!! The afternoon and dinner was spent at our campsite, lounging. Peewee and a few other regular camp inhabitants invited us for a spaghetti dinner. We then sat around the campfire listening to everyone's gold stories and dealings with the wildlife. The wildlife conversation was sparked by the previous nights coyote howlings. Being in between large hillsides, the howls just echoed and echoed.
Our third day we spent along Eagle Creek digging and panning for gold. We saw A LOT of wild life from the really small...
...to the pretty large! We walked around a large clump of bushes and BAM! there this guy/gal was just fifty feet in front of us. It looked pretty young and we feared the momma being nearby, so we turned and walked back the way we came.
We also had to take an afternoon drive to put one-year old to sleep for a nap. We drove to the peak of this road...
...admired the view, then drove back down. Once low enough to where the road was two lanes again, we pulled over, rolled down the window and all four of us napped in the car in the mountains. We had about 15 minutes of natures silence and a cool breeze to relax in. At least...we tried to until a squirrel seeked us out and proceeded to chatter at us until we left.
We almost stayed a third night but changed our minds late in the day. Our drive back home took us past the Snake Pit where we had dinner. Looks a bit interesting from the outside, but is a pretty neat establishment.

All in all...I would DEFINITELY go back. Our next chance may be this October, but then it would be weather pending. Otherwise, next summer for sure! It is such a beautiful area and we FOUND GOLD!! We never did make it to Wallace, and that was the original plan. :)