North Idaho

I've noticed something living a couple miles closer to the Canadian border...it seems folks are pretty proud of being in "North Idaho." Not just Idaho, NORTH Idaho. I get it that it's different than the other parts of the state (no, not just for being more northern) but in regards to weather, trees, amount of lakes and whatnot...but where do you draw the line? I personally would probably draw it somewhere around the Clearwater, due to similar weather, topography and trees...but that's doesn't seem to be the case. "North" Idaho is very obviously from somewhere close to Moscow and up.

I got a thought, perhaps, with the strong elk hunting culture it's a fish and game thing, like elk hunting zones or something...and that started to match. The "Panhandle" area fits the bill and that distiction is the Clearwater / St. Joe divide. Okay, now...what could possibly be the reason those regions were drawn the way they are? Ahhaa! It's hydrological!

This led me to think that the Pend Oreille system and the Spokane system specifically make up "North Idaho." The Clearwater is basically connected to the southern part of the state via the Snake...so of course THAT couldn't be counted as north! So where's the break between the St. Joe and the Clearwater? And I'll be darned, just north of Moscow is the town of Potlatch...which is extremely close to a place called Marsh Hill that's along Highway 95. That SEEMS to be about where the line would be drawn. I'm not going to go into too much flippin' "research" to figure this out, I was just curious.

But there you go.

Back to the point...people seem pretty proud of being closer and closer to the border. Because now, just living about 50 miles north of Coeur d'Alene...I HEAR about it a lot more. It darn near comes up on a day-to-day basis. The phrase "well, this IS north Idaho" or "welcome to north Idaho" is used to describe anything from weather, commuting distances, road conditions, people, fashion, quirks, to best places to get a burger!

Shoot, just yesterday I had taken my truck in to a mechanic to get a noise looked into. I thought it may be something with the transmission, so I took it to a specialist...and my past experiences with mechanics led me to think I needed a rental car. So when I was chatting with the guy, I indicated I was going to walk across the road and get one. He asked if I lived around here and finally got around to saying, "welcome to north Idaho."

(You see, if you're going to live in north Idaho you need extra vehicles to drive around...obviously.)

And it turned out to be an axle making the noise and not the transmission, so that worked out well. The rental car was really easy to go fast in and it had Washington plates...glad I didn't have it too much longer or I would've gotten pulled over. I mean, this IS north Idaho.