Our last day in Coeur d’Alene was a mix of activities and boxing. We started the day strong at Farragut State Park which is located 30 miles north of Coeur d’Alene on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille. It was once the world’s second largest naval training station. Fortunately the Letterboxing Chiller was not awake enough to dampen the experience and we found a wonderful box there at the park stuffed full of memorabilia, park history and two stamps.
We had time to visit the Farragut Naval Training Center Museum which is located in the old Brig. Up until the 1940’s Farragut was the second-largest U. S. naval training station in the world. During the 30 months it was operational, Farragut trained 293,381 recruits and over 25,000 service school attendees.
From the museum we completely shifted gears and visited Wolf People. Wolf People was formed in 1993 to educate the public about wolves. We visited the gift shop (obviously the Letterbox Chiller was back in action because they could not locate the letterbox that should have been behind the counter) and then went on the tour. They currently have 23 wolves in their pack and we were fortunate (I was like a little kid) to get to pet three of the wolves while on the tour. Since the wolves have all blown their winter coats (just like Raisin and Jay do) they seemed so slight in stature. I am amazed at how softly their feet touch the ground when they walk. Before the end of the tour the main wolf handler started to howl and all the wolves around the compound started to howl too. It was amazing to hear the howl move from enclosure to enclosure almost the entire way around the compound. The alpha wolf was apparently not willing to join in while we were there but the rest of the pack howled for quite a few minutes. It gave me goose bumps!
Farragut Naval Training Center Museum: http://museum.mil.idaho.gov/farragut.html
Farragut State Park: http://www.stateparks.com/farragut_state_park_in_idaho.html
Wolf People: http://www.wolfpeople.com
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