Priest River Timber Days

Friday, August 2, 2013

This past weekend was the annual Priest River celebration of Timber Days, where they celebrate the town's rich logging history with a parade, arts and crafts in the park, and loggers from all over the area show up to compete in the various competitions using only their axe.

The parade started at 11, and most of the town showed up to watch the parade.  The streets were packed with families and excited children clutching their bags to stow away their candy treasures.   


I loved watching the young children get so excited as they waited for the parade, and the impatience in their voices.  I heard them asking their parents over and over, when is it going to start? How I fondly remember those days... now that my kids are teenagers, a parade is not such a big deal for them anymore!


The streets lined with people, and lots of children waiting for the candy throwing floats to begin!


First came the veterans carrying the American flag.

 Lots of patriotism in this parade!

I think just about every fire truck in the area showed up to toot their horns, and throw candy...


And then came the log trucks, all shined and spiffed up, showing off their stuff. 


Those were some pretty big logs sitting on those trucks... wish I had at least one or two of those logs split and stacked in my backyard ready for the winter ahead!



The Spartan cheerleaders stopped in front of us to perform.  They are all ready for the fall season of football...



The parade lasted for thirty minutes, and there were lots of interesting floats, and some carried water guns, squirting the crowd, and others sprayed the crowd with red, white and blue crepe paper.  It was a beautiful day for a parade. 




As soon as the parade finished moving through town, everyone followed the parade down to the City Park where all the fun was getting started with the timber competitions.


As we arrived at the park, we watched this competition.  There were three pine logs that the logger had to stand on, and chop away with his axe until they split in half. The logger with the least amount of time splitting his log was the winner.


The logger had to stand on the log and chop away, and the competitions were timed to see how fast it could be done. The logger who won this particular competition chopped that big log in half in 37 seconds... pretty amazing!





After we watched the logging competitions for a while, hunger and thirst drove us over to the park where we got a bite to eat and something to drink.  Then we browsed around the various little tent booths that were set up in the park with many local people selling things they had made. 

It was great to see the people of Priest River out celebrating their rich history in logging.  As we watched those guys chip away at the logs with their axes, it made me realize how far we have come since the days where everything had to be done by the sweat of the brow.  No longer do loggers use cross-saws or axes, but they have all kinds of fancy logging equipment to do the job that once required the sweat of their brow. 

It is a good thing to stop and remember those "good ole days", which in many ways were the "tough ole days" if we're being truthful.  Lots of hard work, sweat, blood and tears!


Our kids were at the 4H Horse Fair for the weekend, and so after going over there to see them, my husband and I took a drive together.  We ended up getting out for a short walk along the Pend O'Reille River, walking down the train tracks close to the river right at dusk.  These pictures are taken with a camera that I just bought to carry in my purse instead of dragging my big daddy camera with me wherever I go.  I found that I really missed my big camera, as I couldn't adjust any of the settings on this camera to adjust for the deepening shadows of the day.  



I guess I'll still be dragging my big camera with me from now on... I really missed using my manual settings to adjust for the aperture and F-stop settings as the light was constantly changing, and decreasing. 


But you get a sense of the quiet and stillness over the river as the day comes to an end, a simply beautiful end.  I never get tired of the beauty that the sun casts over the river as each day comes to a close.








It was a beautiful ending to a lovely day. 

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