A Trip to Paris

     We had been down this road before. We were returning from our Seattle trip with the Ranger loaded with packaged crates.  

     I was driving and the Goodwife was navigating.  I missed the junction.  Not much of a difference in mileage, really.  It was whether we went south along the east side of Bear Lake (we did) on the Wyoming border, or south along the west side of Bear Lake into the corner of Utah before turning east into Wyoming.  (For map, see,  https://www.google.com/maps/@42.0477867,-111.140537,10z)

        This time we stopped, really stopped, like in overnight stop, before proceeding along our chosen route.  We spent the night in Montpelier.

     I asked the friendly motel clerk lady where the junction was to go through Paris.  She pointed through the office window front where a couple of blocks away, we could see a stoplight.  “Turn right at the stoplight.  Don’t blink,” she added.  “You’ll miss it.”  She wasn’t referring to the stoplight.

     It was a lazy Saturday morning, not much traffic, not much reason to be stirring on a coolish weekend morning.  We met a couple of pickups towing stock trailers.  Sale day somewhere?

      We could slow down, pull over and snap a picture or two without worry of being rear ended by someone in a hurry to get somewhere.

 

      If you didn’t know Bear Lake lay six or seven miles away (pretty hard not to know if you read the road signs advertising local businesses), you would think Paris was a small town in the middle of nowhere, with mountain ranges in the distance, with not much to recommend it.  But it must have had something to recommend it in the olden days, enough to earn it the county seat with all the trappings that go along with that designation.

 

      There are other historical buildings and historical sight markers.

     And a city hall building where one would find the Justice of the Peace if he wanted one:

 

    Many years ago, a young couple eloped to Paris.  They could always say they got married in Paris.  No need to mention “Idaho”. 

     Like filling up the gas tank in Sinclair, seeing Paris, ID was a dimple in the bucket of my bucket list.  Paris was a bit more fulfilling than Sinclair was.  It was quite picturesque, actually.

 

     We drove around a little, mostly to view a chateau on the hill to the west, which turned out to be somewhat of a modular the closer we got.  There are lots of older houses, with “character”, I’m told. 

 

      After the last shutter snap, we proceeded down the road.  The road and the shoreline of Bear Lake drew together, but it was hard to see the lake.  Between the highway and the water are “cabins”, from modest bungalows to huge multi-story mansions.  Many homes are going up on the opposite side of the highway, too.  Most are vacant this time of year, as the place seems to be a summer refuge for those who can afford to maintain a vacant house during the winter months. 

     Somewhere near the southern tip of the lake, you cross over into Utah.  The road bends around the southern tip of the lake and leads into Wyoming.  It is a pretty drive.  It would probably be prettier going west and north (we were going south and east).  You get a better glimpse of the lake and there are mountain ranges to the north and west that you don’t really see going the way we did.

     As the sun slowly rose higher in the east, we headed to Kemmerer and our way home.