A trip to the Okanogan country, day 2

[mmegaera]

Harry the pig, who resides in the hamlet of Molson, Washington.

The knee could have been worse, I suppose. I won’t be doing any hiking today, at any rate.

But I head north to one of my favorite places in the Okanogan Highlands, the little half ghost town, half hamlet of Molson, which has the name of a Canadian beer because when the town was first founded, its settlers thought they were north of the 49th parallel (as it turns out, they were a couple of miles south of it, but oh, well).

It’s kind of a drive up there, another hour or so along the Okanogan River, past the little village of Riverside and through the slightly larger town of Tonasket, up to Oroville, along the southern shore of long, narrow Lake Osoyoos, which is cut in half by the U.S./Canadian border. There’s a huge grocery store just south of the customs building, with a parking lot always full of cars with British Columbia license plates. I guess groceries are cheaper in the U.S.?

At Oroville I turn east on a little two-lane called Chesaw Road (you know you’ve made the correct turn when you see the sign saying this way to the Sitzmark Ski Area, a little rope tow out in the middle of nowhere about forty miles out of Oroville), and head up through a narrow canyon, gaining quite a bit of altitude in the process before I come out on top of an undulating plateau. These are the true Okanogan Highlands, and are mostly ranchland where they’re not part of the national forest. About twelve miles east of Oroville is the lefthand turn on Molson Rd.

This is beautiful countryside, in so many ways. If you love rolling hills, larches and pines, golden brown grass, and wide open spaces, or you have a thing for wondering who lived in the occasional old, abandoned building out in the middle of the meadow, or even if — in spite of being absolutely in love with the thick Douglas fir forests on the west side of the mountains — you’re simply enthralled with the enormity of the bright blue sky, then the Okanogan Highlands are a balm.

One of the abandoned buildings scattered about the Okanogan. This one is on the road to Molson.

And the little town of Molson is well worth the drive. In the first place, it’s the home of the Molson School Museum I mentioned a couple of posts ago.

In the second, the citizens of Molson have preserved about an acre’s worth of historic buildings, which are open all the time so you can go in and explore.

Part of the ghost town of Old Molson.

Inside one of the ghost town buildings of Old Molson.

And in the third place, they have Harry the pig.

I love Harry. I wanted his backstory so badly I invented one for him. And then wrote a novel around it.

Now, I don’t know if the plaster pig in the abandoned store window in ‘downtown’ Molson actually has a name — I never asked. But in my novel Sojourn he’s Harry, and he’s very important to my fictional Conconully. As a matter of fact, the town might not even exist without him. So I love him. He’s just such a whimsy for a place like that.

After a couple of hours exploring and a pleasant picnic lunch, and a gravel lane that eventually leads me back to Tonasket, I reluctantly head south again. I need to be home by tonight, and it’s a good five-hour drive if I take the bit of a detour into the Methow Valley that I have planned.

My goat trail for the trip. Actually, it was a very nice, well-maintained gravel road.

At the town of Okanogan I turn west, and less than half an hour later I realize that I ought to have checked the road conditions first. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in my last post, this past summer Washington state experienced its largest wildfire ever, which covered over 250,000 acres in the north central part of the state. The Carlton Complex fire caused damage that the area will still be recovering from years from now, and part of that damage was to U.S. Highway 20 between Okanogan and the Methow (pronounced Met-how, pronouncing the T and the H separately) Valley. The traffic was down to an alternating one lane for over a mile, and I lost a good half an hour by the time I reached the valley.

That was just my first check. The second was that State highway 153, which runs south down the valley towards Wenatchee, was also closed due to fire damage. Fortunately, a backroad runs parallel to it and a detour was set up. But I lost another hour by the time I got to Wenatchee.

Still, it was worth it, although I don’t think I’d have made the detour had I known. U.S. 20 climbs up over a magnificent pass and descends into the scenic Methow Valley, and the backroad down the valley was spectacular, crossing and recrossing the Methow River in the shadow of glorious mountains. And I found a non-crowded fruit stand just north of Wenatchee and loaded up on apples and pears.

I didn’t get home till well after dark that Sunday evening. I was tired and my knee was sore. But it was all so worth it. I highly recommend a weekend in the Okanogan country.

Mirrored from Repeating History.

Comments

[mmegaera]

[g] I'm glad you enjoy them, but I'm also glad you're spelling it Okanogan rather than Okanagan (the latter is the Canadian spelling).

[thnidu]

Well, that's how I first encountered it in your writing, and I think that's how it's spelled where I'm seeing it. And the apparent pronunciations are different enough— the primary-stress vowel— to keep this one clear in my mind.

[mmegaera]

Glad to be of use.

Spelling notwithstanding, they're virtually indistinguishable when pronounced (except for the Canadian accent thing [g]).

[thnidu]

Hmm, is the stress on the 2nd syllable then?

[mmegaera]

No, on the first. O'-kan-ah-gan.

[thnidu]

Thanks. I figured that with those two spellings for the same pronunciation it couldn't be on the third.

ETA: I just looked it up online. Wikipedia gives 2 prons that are pretty much equivalent: Okanogan (/ˌoʊkəˈnɒɡən/ US dict: ōk′·ə·nŏg′·ən; derived from Syilx'tsn: "rendezvous" or "meeting place") is a city in Okanogan County, Washington, United States.

I hadn't figured on a short O there, more fool me.;-)

[mmegaera]

The first O is long, the second one isn't. And there's almost as much stress on the third syllable as there is on the first.

I'm no good at this sort of thing, and I'm afraid all those symbols might as well be Greek to me.

We have a lot of weird place names in this part of the world, but I never thought of Okanogan as one of them. [wry g]

I mean, Wollochet is *much* worse... (Wo-loch'-et -- first O is long, second one isn't, and the ch is like church, not like the Scottish loch).

[thnidu]

>> The first O is long, the second one isn't. And there's almost as much stress on the third syllable as there is on the first.

Yeah, that's what I got from the entries.

Funny thing. I tried the city website, no dice. And as for its history... Has somebody been retroactively meddling with it? ;-)

[mmegaera]

Got me. From my research for Sojourn, I can tell you that most of the little towns in Okanogan County were originally settled by gold miners, not that a lot of gold was actually found there.

It looks like someone in city government thought it would be a good idea to have a history page, then never got around to doing anything about it.

You'll have more luck with the Okanogan County Historical Society (http://okanoganhistory.org/) which has a great museum and a good website.

[thnidu]

,>> a lot of weird place names in this part of the world

The Salishan languages are at or near the top of the list for a couple of characteristics that can reasonably be called "hard, weird pronunciation". Speaking unprofessionally, of course!

[mmegaera]

Speaking as someone whose mailing address (I actually live out in the county) is the city of Puyallup (pew-all'-up), I have to agree [g].

[thnidu]

Oh boy. Just to check:

Pew as in church, not Winnie-the-Pooh?

All as in "fall", not "Al"?

[mmegaera]

Pew as in church, all as in fall, yes [g].

It's the name of a local Indian tribe, whose reservation covers part of Tacoma and part of the county.

[thnidu]

Mm, yah. Wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puyallup,_Washington) has both ALL and AL. I *have* seen this cited before as one of the more opaque WA-state placenames.

Puyallup, Washington (Listen: /pjuːˈæləp/ pew-AL-əp or /pjuːˈɔːləp/ pew-AWL-əp) is a city in Pierce County, Washington, about five miles (8 km) east of Tacoma. The population was 37,022 at the 2010 Census and the Washington State Office of Financial Management estimated the 2013 population at 37,980. Named after the Puyallup Tribe of Native Americans, Puyallup means "the generous people".

[mmegaera]

The AL ALL thing is because it's actually sort of in between, to my ear, at least. You hear it both ways, but I have been informed that ALL is the *right* way by those who make a big deal out of it (not the tribe themselves necessarily).