MALAD, Idaho — The Intermountain West offers so much to a traveler that some places escape broad notice.
That's fine with the people in Malad, Idaho, who enjoy a vibrant small town surrounded by solitude you don't find near National Parks or luxury resorts.
I had no idea what to expect when the Max Tracks Wheel of Wandering (just made that name up... but consider it trademarked!) pointed me to Malad.
I knew Idaho weather on the Ides of March might be a problem (Thanks to my AP English Teacher, Miss Dehart, for that fancy way to say March 15!).
Okay, enough parentheses (They get annoying, don'tcha think?).
So weather was a problem. Half of my to-do list got nixed by heavy, wet snow and biting wind. I did not see the Curlew National Grassland, the existence of which made me ponder, "National Grassland? Is that really a thing?"
I saw the signs, so I know it's a thing. On my Malad weekend, it was a big muddy thing that caked my boots as soon as I stepped out of the truck.
Thank goodness for the good people of Malad.
Because Malad was a mystery to me, I toured the town through Google's Street View more than usual, which is a lot because I'm kind of a map nut. When I saw a place, I searched for more about it, and it paid off in a big way on this trip.
My first stop was the Oneida County Senior Center, right in the center of town. The place was packed for lunch, and no one gave me the I'm-considering-pepper-spray vibe well known to every reporter.
I sat at a big round table with a collection of town insiders.
"Are you a Malad native?" I asked Mary Ellen Ward Knudsen.
"I am," she replied quickly and with verve.
"What do you like about it?"
"Everything!" Her emphatic certainty brokered no guff from me.
Mary Ellen shared a trait with a lot of her friends. Yes, she grew up in Malad, and yes, she lived in other places and CHOSE TO COME BACK!
"We lived in about 14 places. We spent time back east with his jobs," she said.
"So you decided this is the place you want to be?" I asked.
"Yeah, I was surprised when he [her husband] wanted to be here, because he's a Salt Lake City slicker," she said to the Salt Lake City slicker asking the questions.
You may have noticed, Mary Ellen used her maiden name when introducing herself. It happened several times on my trip, each time to emphasize pride in their family of origin and the family's role in the history of the town.
For example, Ronda Hess Crowther gave me a tour of the Hess Lumber and Home Center in town.
"My grandfather started this business, we think in about 1935," she told me.
Inside the store on a Saturday showed me how much the pretty big place was a family business. First I met a young granddaughter asking for candy, two grandsons stocking items in the back, and her son, Doug, who has managed the place since Ronda and her husband Jared retired.
When Ronda Hess married Jared Crowther, it might have been the Malad equivalent of a royal marriage sealing an alliance between nations. Hess and Crowther are big names in town. The Crowthers built Crowther Reservoir to provide steady power for the Crowther Mill.
Royal or not, Oneida County wears its old-world roots proudly.
The story is when Latter Day Saint pioneers from Wales saw the Malad Valley, it felt like home. That was back in the early 1850s.
The high school mascot is the Dragons. Apparently, Wales was infested with the flying lizards way back when (I said no more parentheses, but I need to say here I understand this and the royal marriage thing are exaggerations. You know that, but every now and then, a reader thinks I'm serious about something so outlandish.).
Anyway, dragons leave their marks all over town. Giant black claw-prints on sidewalks, painted dragons on windows, and dragon flags hanging inside and out. No dragon droppings that I could see or smell, but who knows?
The annual Welsh Festival is held in the nearby town of Samaria.
Speaking of royalty, Samaria is also the birthplace of Olive May Davis Osmand. She is the original matriarch of the harmonically gifted clan, and the cabin where she grew up sits on the grounds of the Malad Valley Heritage Center. The center is also home to the Welsh festival.
Down the road from the festival grounds is the Blue Goose store, with an unexpected proprietor.
The Blue Goose is a throwback. A cute, sturdy hut of a store owned by the Samaria Recreation District and open on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. It offers a lot of necessities, but on the Saturday I visited, the main draw was penny candy.
The man behind the register was a retired big-city police officer, Brian Llewellyn.
In a friendly way, Llewellyn blames his old neighbor Clarence for saddling him with responsibility for the Blue Goose.
"Clarence had cancer, and asked me to learn how to do the books here. He asked me to take his position as the Commissioner for the Recreation District. He said, 'Just till the next election, then you go ahead and just let whoever wants it win,'" said Llewellyn.
"How long ago was that?" I asked.
"'Bout 13 years," he said.
It was a great punchline, and a nice tribute to the man who is still honored with a life-sized cardboard cutout in the corner.
When traffic dies down, Llewellyn can usually rely on some fellow retirees to be hanging out at the store's corner table. Today it was Doyle Waldron, whose relatives are pictured prominently on a wall of the store dedicated to Samaria's history.
In fact, the Blue Goose owes its continued existence, in part, to the Waldrons.
"It used to be located down there," Doyle told me while pointing down the street, "And the owner of the property was going to burn it down. My sister and my son, they decided, 'Oh, they can't do that.' So they got tractors and pulled it up here."
Along with Llewellyn, it was another transplant who took on the duty to be my tour guide around Malad. Steven Mills moved to town in 2010, five years after he first saw the place on a deer-hunting trip.
Mills still cherishes his roots in a small Native American tribe in North-Central California, and he limps with an injury earned in his time driving giant trucks for the U.S. Army.
He's still connected to family and friends in California, but Malad has become special.
"When I come back from visiting cousins in California, as soon as I see the valley, I know I've come home."
