During our trip to north Idaho, we took one of the days to explore the historical town of Wallace, Idaho.
It is the quintessential historical mountain town. With turn of the century (1900s) brick buildings, victorian homes and the picture esc pine tree covered mountains surrounding it. This town is a little hidden gem. In fact, as we were making our way up to northern Idaho for this trip, one of my kiddos, examining the scenery said, “This looks like Bob Ross.” And does it ever!
Chris and I have been longtime fans of the Discovery show Gold Rush. Our older kids have seen several episodes, and all our kids are obsessed with rocks. So the first thing we knew we needed to do was check out the Sierra Silver Mine!
It starts at a cute gift shop/ ice cream parlor down town. You get onto this trolly and take a guided tour through town. Emelia was chosen to be the trolly “navigator.” So she got to ride in the front passenger seat. The rest of us were here in the back together. The trolley is open, if you go in the morning like we did, you may want a jacket as the breeze picks up with the speed. The tour guide was amazing. As he weaves in and out of the streets he gives the history of the town. After about 15 minutes you will arrive at the mine site.
Everyone dons a hard hat and a new tour guide takes over. A retired miner. You’ll get to go into the mining site in the side of the mountain. This site is currently set up for tours only, but active mining is not far away. Here they mine for silver. The tour goes through the eras of silver mining and what it looked like for miners pre electricity to current days.
The entire tour takes probably 30 minutes. Given that you are inside the mountain, again, its a good idea to have a light jacket.
Our children are 6-11, with our little caboose at 1.5 yrs. For the older kids this tour was perfect. For our toddler, it was a little long and they turn on loud equipment that she did not enjoy. So be cautious of that.
After the tour, the trolly appears again and you are returned to your starting point. I will note that it was easy to find parking (free) right in front of the starting/ending point.
After the tour ended, the navigator bought his assistant some ice cream! So naturally we all got some and they had some delicious flavors. They were reasonably priced too which is always a plus when eating out as a family.
We did find the lunch dinning options in Wallace to be limited, but there are a few. We ended up at a very nice, quaint restaurant, that came with a price tag that continues to be my only regret of the trip. The food was great. The staff was great. But the butter noodles my 6 year old ordered were $10 and I still cringe at the thought.
After the silver mine tour, we went to the Northern Pacific Railroad Depot. This is the original depot and has been preserved so beautifully. There we paid $20 for a family day pass to 3 museums in town. The depot, the Wallace District Mining Museum, and the Barnard-Stockbridge Museum.
The three photos below are from the depot. The outside, the sweet lady working the front desk, and the cutest bathroom that has me inspired to work on my own. The tours in all the museums we visited are self guided. Although the lady at the train depot gave us quite the tour and even passed out brownies. She was wonderful. Upstairs in the depot are many hands on exhibits for the kids. Old phones, the bell, look and finds. The depot was definitely my favorite of the three and if you only picked one, I’d go there.
All three museums were close enough to walk to. It was fun to just park for the day and walk the town. But towards the end little miss here was done. At random she walked over and just sat here. It was pretty cute.
The other big activity on this trip was the older boys and dads riding the mountain bike trails in Kellogg. It was so neat to see a chair lift for the ski resort right in town! During the summer it operates as a mountain biking outfit. The boys had a blast.
I stayed at the RV with the kids who had the stomach flu that day. Probably the worst we’ve ever had it. It wouldn’t be a trip if someone didn’t get sick.
While on this trip we stayed in Burke Canyon. Burke Creekside RV Camping. They had water and electric hookups for the RV, which was nice. The hosts were wonderful and the setting in the canyon was cozy and family friendly. I would highly recommend staying there. Grandma Lisa had activities that were easily accessible. Painting rocks, calk, horseshoe, a grassy area to play plus a fire pit were some of the amenities that we enjoyed. There’s also Wifi, which was really handy because we did not have cell service.
Northern Idaho was beautiful. If you have never been, put it on your bucket list.
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