Growing up my family went to the gold dredge every year, up by Stanley, ID. My Grandpa Buzz (dad's dad) grew up there. His dad worked on the dredge. When they stopped running the dredge it was parked on one side of the river. J.R. Simplot, the owner of the dredge, found out that it couldn't be parked there so he called my Great Grandpa Schraft and he moved it to where it is now. We have not visited there in almost 10 years due to people being busy or not close enough to make the trip. This year we all made it a priority to go. It was so much fun! They have redone things in the dredge and put up a lot of pictures. There was a lot of pictures of my grandpa as a child, with his friends and in the little class they provided for the kids. We all loved seeing my grandpa light up and talk about his childhood and all of those memories. There is a lot of history up there for that little town. By where we camp there is a graveyard for the town, then up the mountain a few miles is another graveyard. There are only three people buried there, they wanted them buried away from the other townspeople to do scandals, affairs, and murder. It is a pretty crazy story!
We were all in tents except for my grandma and grandpa. At night it got down to 30 degrees. It was SO cold! Poor Noah started getting a couple teeth when we left so again sorry everyone for his cries echoing through the campground! We had so much fun though. We hiked, played games, swam in a freezing cold river and just enjoyed each others company without any technology to disrupt our family time. We went to the little town of Custer and walked around reading all the stories and history. We planned for gold and the kids all thought that was amazing that they found their own gold!
We seriously had such a fun time and it is beautiful up there. I loved being there and remembering old memories and creating new ones. My dad loved that we could have my younger sisters there and my kids- a whole new generation to share this history with. Thank you grandpa for having such an amazing experience to bring us all back to.
No comments:
Post a Comment