A Trip Up North
The Round Trip in a Wagon
Austin Mires and Ralph Kauffman Enjoyed the Trip in the Fall of 1887.

The story of their visit to Ruby City and the Okanogan mines
as told by A. Mires for The Dawn
Ellensburg Dawn
January 28, 1904

It was on the morning of Wednesday Aug. 24, 1887, that Ralph Kauffman and the writer, with a light two-horse rig, too heavy, however, for the span of livery horses composing our team, started for the new Okanogan mining camps of Ruby and Conconully. The weather was warm and we did not deem it necessary to encumber ourselves with our overcoats. During the trip in we needed no extra clothing to keep warm; to the contrary on our return. The first trip over a new road is, or seems to be the longest and roughest.

Our trip over the Wenatchee mountain was, therefore, tiresome in the extreme. On our way up the mountain we overtook a party in a two-seated rig, composed of B. A. Maxey driver, Messrs. Goodnough, Looney and Johnson, We all lunched at a spring of cool water. We made slow time too, as the mountain is nothing more than an immense rock or mass of rock and so steep in places that progress was something like climbing a tree, on our way down the Colockum on the other side, however, we made somewhat better time.

My friend Kauffman had never before traveled behind a pair of cayuses over a western mountain road. It is generally known too. that I am no dilatory driver, when a chance is offered for making time. By way of emphasis, I digress to say: At one time some of the boys went to my friend Clarence Palmer to gel a team for a drive on a fishing trip and they told him they wanted a good team, He asked them "Who is to drive?" They said "Mires." To which he made the significant reply: ''That cuss never knows when a team is running away."

When we got down to the more level ground of the Colockum bottom, my friend drew a long breath and suggested, "that a person standing on a distant hill and viewing our course down the mountain would see nothing but a comet-like streak of dust." As the shades of evening drew curtain over the Colockum canyon, we drew up al the little fruit ranch of Ed Cooke, where we camped for the night. Ed was not at home but Mrs. Cooke and the children were there and F. S. Thorp, an old time Ellensburg lawyer, had come down from his ranch, some two mile's above to look after things during Ed's absence.

Outdoor traveling always sharpens the appetite, especially so over such roads as we had just come, so that we were prepared to relish anything edible whether digestible or not. Mr. Looney bad a shotgun with him and on the way down he had bagged a sage hen, a prairie chicken and a pair of turtle doves. We cooked them by our camp fire and partook of a supper that would make Rockefellers hair grow again from envy.

We had noticed a dead rattlesnake as we came along down the canyon. This excited considerable inquiry on our part as the likelihood of the presence of these creatures in the vicinity of our camp. I have always had the uncontrollable fear of snakes; inherited, I believe, from remote ancestors who had same kind of trouble over an early representative of snakedom in the garden a long time ago. I noticed from the anxious look, and occasional catching of breath, accompanying the questions of my friend Kauffman, that he was afflicted in a manner similar to myself. We made our bed down on the

ground in the open air, having first prepared a layer of rye grass hay for a mattress. Just as we were preparing to "retire," Kauffman noticed a kind of rolling motion to the cover of our bed. It was but natural that the first idea to enter his mind would be snakes. And so it was. He gave a start and shouted, louder than I ever heard him before or have ever heard him since, "My God there's, a rattlesnake in the bed!"

We sprung to our feet as if moved by electricity, and there we stood in undress uniform, straight up, our hair trying to pull itself out by the roots. We did not dare to step this way nor that in fear of treading on a snake. The suspense was awful, but it lasted hut a moment when to our pleasant surprise, a cat mewed and wriggled out from under our blankets. Our excitement gradually subsided and we drifted into sleep.

That first night out, in the open air, our sleep was a restful slumber. Starting early next morning, we journeyed by the place shortly afterward owned by Chas. B. Reed, and where he now resides, and at the "Dutch John" ranch passed our friends in the hack and traveled alone reaching the Columbia river ferry at a point about opposite where the city of Wenatchee now stands by noon, and here in the hot sand took our lunch. Be it known, however, there was no city there then, nor in fact had there yet dawned any dream of one. A old slab shanty stood fifty or a hundred yards up from the river, in which the lazy ferryman with fleas moonlighted.

We knew he was lazy by the way he moved, and that he bad fleas, or something else. by the way he scratched. The ferry boat was on a par With the ferryman. It was in shabby concern and we feared every moment we were doomed to the bottom of the river. The boat was propelled by some kind of steam engine, fed with driftwood, and geared to the paddle wheels with a belt. Every now and then the engine would seem to loose its breath, the belt would slip and we would be at the mercy of the current for a few moments, that seemed minutes to us, but finally we reached the other shore in safety and paid the exorbitant fare with gratitude.

This was an awful day of sand and heat and dust and thirst. Scarcely would one finish taking a drink of water where he longed for another. We plodded wearily along, in the deep burning sand, up the east bank of the Columbia river. After getting through the sand our way wormed through the sage brush, and the loose, thin soil; pale and light as ashes, arose at every foot, filling nose, mouth, eyes and ears to suffocation, turning all objects into one dull color.

Just as we turned a large boulder or cliff of rock we met three Ellensberger's in a buck-board, Martin Sautter, I. T. Keene and Mose Bollman. Sautter was sitting flat down in the bottom of the buck-board and of course enjoying(?) himself The other two occupants were it the seat. It is a sensation that the man who has never traveled never knows or can know, that thrills the traveler in a strange or new country, and especially in the barren desert , on meeting an acquaintance.