On my last day in Spokane Lydia took me on a scenic drive around Lake Coeur d’Alene. Located about an hour East, this picturesque, jaggedly-constructed body of water (to me its shape resembles a capital “L” as rendered by some Captcha test) is one of the most popular and desirable spots in the region. All along its 109 miles of shoreline sit multi-million dollar homes with special lifts that can take them down to the boat docks below.

Even if all of my writing projects succeeded beyond my wildest fantasies I’d never be able to afford one of these houses (nor would I necessarily want to live there. As stunning as it is you’re a good 90 minutes away from any urban amenities, separated by miles of windy, one-lane mountain highways. Good luck calling an ambulance if you have a heart attack!) but us common folk can still drive by, gawk, and live vicariously through these rich bastards.

The drive was long but positively resplendent. After an hour or so of winding through trees, cliffs, and posh cabins we came across a rare gas station. I asked Lydia to stop. She didn’t need gas and I didn’t need to pee but there was something else I needed.

I was looking for a refrigerator magnet.

Let me back up a bit. I’m not big into kitsch and I don’t buy many souvenirs but I do like to collect magnets from every state I visit. I have two rules for this:

1. I have to buy the magnet in the state I’m visiting
2. The magnet has to be in the shape of its respective state (circular or rectangular ones don’t count)

Since Ghost on the Highway started in 2017 I’ve amassed maybe twenty of them and they all live on the door of my refrigerator in a loose, not-at-all-to-scale approximation of the United States (I’m truly sorry I don’t have a picture to share). On this tour I’ve nabbed new magnets from Kansas, Colorado, and Arizona but thus far Idaho had eluded me.

We stepped into the quaint, family-run station. There were plenty of keychains and coozies and fishing flies but alas no magnets. We moved on. Coming back toward Spokane we stopped in the border town of Post Falls, Idaho and discovered a huge, bright purple-painted tourist shop called Huckleberry Thicket. Surely this ultra-schlocky emporium would have what I needed.

This place was stuffed with Idaho-themed t-shirts and coasters and cutting boards but no magnets (or at least no Idaho shaped magnets). But the main attraction at this place was its fanatical devotion to all things Huckleberry.

I had never tasted or even thought about a huckleberry before this particular pass through Idaho but the entire region is obsessed with it. Huckleberries are indigenous to the Northwest’s foresty, subalpine climate and can only be grown in the wild. The people of Idaho (and Western Montana) apparently collect enough of them to produce and sell an astonishing array of huckleberry-infused products including jam, pancake mix, coffee, candy, barbecue sauce, honey, soap, and even beer (seriously, I had a huckleberry lager and it was pretty good!). One gas station I stopped at loudly boasted of their Huckleberry Milkshake, which I might have tried if not for the $7 price tag.

But long before huckleberries became a staple of Idaho panhandle identity the region was defined by mining. Remnants of this once colossal industry abound in the form of the rustic, brick-laden boom towns it left behind. One such town is the city of Wallace, which my friend Patrick specifically recommended I visit (I knew I could trust his recommendations. After all, he was the one who introduced me to the similarly strange ghost town of Firebaugh, California years ago).

Wallace is one of those frozen-in-time towns that seem all the more precious as the rest of America becomes increasingly bland and gentrified. There are many cities out there whose development was arrested for one reason or another but there’s something about towns that peaked in the late 19^th/early 20^th century that especially draw me in. Wallace is small and clearly not thriving but it remains connected to the past through its institutions, its architecture, and its culture.

If you ever stop by Wallace (and you should) I must recommend a tour of the Oasis Bordello Museum. This institution commemorates a legendary local brothel that operated until 1988, when the meddlesome eyes of government forced it to shut down. But before that the brothel was actually a vital source of revenue for the town; the madams who operated it would regularly make cash contributions for city improvements and provided donations to local schools and citizens in need. The loss of this place and others like it was a big hit on the Wallace economy.

I find it impressive how this region seems to take an honest and progressive look at how sex work has impacted its history. When this brothel shut down the easy thing to do would have been do demolish the building and sell it to the real whores; i.e. small-minded developers who would have turned the place into a Gap or some shit.   Instead a local family bought the property and agreed to turn it into a monument to an important piece of local history. Good for them.