International Selkirk Loop

Northbound on U.S. 2 from Spokane, 41 miles past the fork where U.S. 395 bears away, the Newport Chamber Visitor Center & Depot Museum stands on the right as the highway enters town. The Loop’s own directions send travelers there first for maps and bearings, about an hour and a quarter out of Spokane. Newport sits on the Idaho border and is the starting point for the Washington segment of the International Selkirk Loop. The full drive is 280 miles, or 450 kilometres, around the Selkirk Mountains of northeast Washington, north Idaho and southeast British Columbia. The town has shops, riverside parks and the Pend Oreille County Historical Society & Museum.

The Loop strings together six shorter routes. In Idaho these are the Wild Horse Trail, the Panhandle Historic Rivers Passage and the Pend Oreille National Scenic Byways. In Washington they are the North Pend Oreille and Pend Oreille Valley Scenic Byways, and in British Columbia the Kootenay Lake Scenic Shoreline Drive. Each carries its own way-finding signs, posted beside the Loop’s. Nearly the whole route follows rivers and lakeshores; the corridor management plan quoted by the Idaho Transportation Department puts the figure at more than 90 percent. More than 75 small communities lie along it. The largest are Nelson, B.C., with 9,500 residents, and Sandpoint, Idaho, with 7,500.

The Federal Highway Administration allows eight to ten hours to drive the entire byway, ferry and border crossings included. The Loop association suggests three to seven days. “There are people who come and stay for two to three weeks and others who are here for two days,” said Stephanie Sims, the association’s executive director. The “Super Side Trips” off the main ring are measured differently by different sources. In 2005 the Idaho Transportation Department counted 242 miles of them. Sims has said they can add 500 miles, and the association’s 2009 cycling guide mapped six side trips totaling 720 kilometres, or 450 miles.

Routes 20 and 31 to Nelway

Washington’s share, about 84 miles by the state tourism office’s count, follows State Routes 20 and 31 north from Newport to the Canadian border. The river beside it is the Pend Oreille, which locals say POND-o-RAY. Near Usk the road passes the Kalispel Tribe of Indians reservation. On LeClerc Road the tribe’s bison herd may be grazing in the distance. A Kalispel Rest Area opened on the Loop in April 2014, with a history of the Kalispel Tribe and a coffee shop.

Tiger stands at the junction of Routes 20 and 31, where the North Pend Oreille Scenic Byway begins. Its one remaining building is a 1913 store and post office, now the seasonal Tiger Historical Center and Museum. Ione grew from the lumber trade. Nearby are Big Meadow Lake for wildlife, Sullivan Lake in the Colville National Forest, and an overlook above Box Canyon Dam.

Metaline Falls was once a mining town. It keeps the Washington Hotel and the Cutter Theatre, whose artistic director, Jeanne Law, has sat on the Loop’s board. Metaline Falls has been named one of the top “Small Arts Communities,” and The Postman, starring Kevin Costner, was shot there. North of town on Highway 31, the Vista House viewpoint looks onto Seattle City Light’s Boundary Dam, where dam tours are offered. “Especially right now with the high river levels, the view of the spilling water is awe-inspiring,” said Sonya Scauflaire of the Pend Oreille Region Tourism Alliance.

Close by, at Crawford State Park Heritage Site, visitors can tour Gardner Cave by reservation to see its stalactites and stalagmites. The state tourism office calls it one of Washington’s longest limestone caves. RV America magazine called it the state’s second largest and noted that the underground tour was free. The Metaline Falls crossing on Highway 31 opens at 8 a.m. and closes at 6 p.m.; across the line is Nelway, B.C. Sims advises carrying a passport or, where appropriate, an enhanced state driver’s license. She also advises leaving guns at home and eating any fresh fruit or vegetables before entering Canada.

Kootenay Lake and the Idaho shore

In British Columbia the Loop passes through Creston and then follows Kootenay Lake. The lake is crossed by a free ferry between Kootenay Bay and Balfour, a ride of about 35 minutes that the Loop calls the world’s longest free ferry ride. The M.V. Osprey 2000 carries 80 car-size vehicles and the older M.V. Balfour about 20. Both take vehicles of almost any type or size, motorhomes included. Sunset Magazine opened its May 2001 article on the Loop with a two-page photograph of the Osprey 2000 setting out across the lake. “Walk on the deck. It’s a gorgeous view,” Sims said. “It’s always a surprise for many travelers how enjoyable that ferry is.”

Ainsworth Hot Springs, founded in 1883, is the oldest surviving community on Kootenay Lake. The writer Lazelle Jones, traveling with his wife and grandson in August 2010, reported that its water must be cooled to 114 degrees before it reaches the pools. On the same trip he found the Glass House along Kootenay Lake. In Kaslo he explored the SS Moyie, a turn-of-the-century paddle wheeler kept in drydock. In Nelson, where Roxanne was filmed, he photographed a restored electric trolley. Artists at Crawford Bay open their studios, among them a broom maker. On the Silvery Slocan side trip, Sims hikes Idaho Peak above Slocan Lake. “You can stand there and look all the way back to Sandpoint (Idaho) and into Washington or 100 miles into B.C.,” she said.

The Idaho portion centers on Lake Pend Oreille, the state’s largest and deepest lake, with Sandpoint, Schweitzer Mountain Resort and Priest River along it. Bonners Ferry dates to the gold strike of 1863 in British Columbia. The town grew up where the prospectors’ trail crossed the Kootenai River.

The country along the way holds moose, elk, deer, grizzly and black bear, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, wolves and woodland caribou. The refuges and management areas count more than 50 mammal species and 265 bird species. In fall, golds and reds show among the dark pine and spruce, and thousands of Canada geese rest on the lakes on their way south along the Pacific Flyway.

A loop for Pend Oreille County

On November 9, 1999, the Spokesman-Review explained where the idea had come from. Twenty years earlier the Cascade Loop, a 500-mile ring out of Everett, had turned depressed timber towns into destinations. It brought visitors to places like Concrete, Washington’s namesake cement plant, and the Aplets and Cotlets candy factory in Cashmere. In northeastern Washington, talk about diversifying the job base led a local economic development council to plan a driving loop inside Pend Oreille County. Members soon saw that a larger region would market better. “When you can see two states and two nations in a two-day trip, that’s much more enticing,” said Fred Gonzalez, a district ranger on the Colville National Forest.

A later account in Scenic WA gives the credit to regional business owners. In that telling, they began piecing the route together in 1999, it met the criteria first for a state and then for a national scenic byway, and it became international when business owners in British Columbia joined.

The nonprofit International Selkirk Loop Association incorporated that year. Within four months it had more than 150 members and had mailed nearly 50,000 brochures. Its marketing director in Sandpoint, Jan Griffitts, was working on a website and a calendar of events. “For a new group, we’ve done a lot,” she said. Howard Dirks, who managed the Nelson chamber of commerce, pointed to the mining past the towns shared. “This area was settled by mining,” he said. Arlene Sloan, who ran the Paradise Valley Inn near Bonners Ferry, said almost nothing had been printed about the region. “Even the Idaho state travel guide just mentions Bonners Ferry as ‘one of the towns on Highway 95,’” she said.

Two countries on one board

On September 22, 2005, the U.S. Department of Transportation named the Loop an All-American Road. The Idaho Transportation Department called it the nation’s only international scenic byway and one of 16 All-American Roads. Canada has no formal scenic byway program. By then the association had an $80,000 marketing budget and nearly 400 members, and it handed out more than 100,000 brochures and maps a year. It promoted the Festival at Sandpoint, the Kaslo Jazz Festival and Nelson’s Summer Songfest. Judges said they were impressed by the two-country effort; the board was split evenly between U.S. and Canadian members. “Being added to America’s Byways Collection is a wonderful validation of what we in Idaho already know,” said Carol Graham, the Loop’s director of operations in Bonners Ferry. The Loop’s website now counts it as one of 32 All-American Roads.

In September 2009, twelve female motorcycle journalists rode new 2010 Harley-Davidsons 705 miles over four days, stopping for dinner at Lovitt’s Restaurant in Colville. “It’s been a sensory overload,” said Pam Collins of New Jersey. That fall a traveler survey estimated that Loop visitors had spent $1.4 million in 2009. The average visitor stayed four days, and 94 percent came from the United States. In 2013 the U.S. Capitol Christmas tree, an 88-foot Engelmann spruce, was cut in the Colville National Forest.

The WaCanId ride, named for Washington, Canada and Idaho, grew from an idea of Dean Cummings, a Newport/Oldtown Rotarian. In September 2010, nine Rotary clubs shepherded 74 cyclists around a 350-mile course in three groups. The groups set out from Sandpoint, Creston and Nelson, and the riders’ bags were delivered to their motels each night. “It was essentially supporting 3 separate rides,” said Ken Schueman, the ride’s chairman and a Newport/Oldtown Rotarian. In 2013, twenty-eight riders left Sandpoint on September 16 and rode clockwise, averaging about 70 miles a day. On the last day the Bonners Ferry Rotary Club served them a spaghetti lunch at the Visitor’s Center before the final leg to Sandpoint.