Saturday 8/26/00
Day 9: Spokane, Newport & Metaline Falls
While
in Spokane I drove around town to let Jacob get an idea of what the town was
like. He compared it to Portland and I agreed. It's a large city that is spread
out and doesn't have the metropolitan problems yet of traffic or vandalism.
It seems to be more conservative with the farming community surrounding it,
but still is a major supplier to Idaho, Montana, Eastern Oregon and Washington.
We first went to the Riverfront Park as it was now getting warm out and many
people were at the park. There was a concert about ready to start, a union representative
giving a speech about corporate greed, families having picnics, tractor races,
kids going on rides, people running, skateboarding, bicyling and many other
activities going on. It seems to be very family oriented which is what Spokane
reminded me of. We stayed in the park for about an hour as we walked across
the bridge of the Waterfalls from the Spoakne River. This is also where Expo
74 was and that was the first time I visited Spokane. There stilll remains the
tent from Expo as I took a picture of that and the clock tower. This is a nice
community park to visit as there is a little bit for everybody to enjoy. There
are also many restaurants and hotels around the park but are not to large to
overwhelm the surroundings.
We
left the park and walked around town for a little while as it is a very clean
town and not hard to get around. There are no traffic jams or beggars on the
corner streets. We walked in a couple shops and window shopped before finally
going to eat lunch at Rocky's Italian restaurant. This food was good as we had
a salad bar, square pan pizza and an Italian soda. We will probably stop here
again next time we are in town. From here we drove north thru town on Division
St. and saw there was a car show going on at Clark Park. There were about 100
cars here as most were 40-60's model with couple Model T's also. Jacob enjoyed
these older cars and it's amazing how much work is involved as we take that
for granted and just see nice cars. Jacob took some pictures of his favorite
cars and we would leave after about an hour. It was good for him as he now felt
like it was worth going this weekend.
We left Spoakne around 3:00 and drove North on state highway 2 as the there are nice houses on the out lying areas of the city. We take a right to go to Mt Spokane State Park which is a small mountain peak overlooking the inland area. We passed Mead high school on our way there. It was nice scenary on our way there as you pass a stream and forested area on your way up the mountain. There are also ski resorts up there and good hiking areas in the summer time. There were camp sights near the top of the mountain but were still closed from the heavy winter season. There wer quite a few cars here today walkng and riding the many trails this park offers. They were not letting people drive to the top of the mountain, but you could walk the rest of the way. There wasn't much of a view from where we parked and we left not real impressed although there were many trails to enjoy. We continued north and left Spokane as we would pass Eloika and Diamond Lake on our left side before reaching Newport right where the Pend Oreille river meets the Idaho border. Newport is the last large town from here north to the Canadian border. It supports both Washington and Idaho citizens that live close to this river. The river begins in Idaho and will flow thru to Alberta Canada. To the north of the river there are many gravel roads on both sides off the river. I stayed on the west side and would drive along the river and stop at many small communitites as we drove north.
Cusick was the first small community we would drive thru along the Pend Oreille . There were about three streets of houses with also a small store. There was also a nice drive along the rive that would go south back to a small community of Usk. There were nice lots along this road that had views overlooking the forested hills in back of the river.. This place looked liked like it would also be a good retirement place as it was very quiet and seemed relaxing. Both Cusick and Usk used to be much larger logging commuitites in the earlies 1900's. There was a reailroad that was built thru here in 1910. There is very little that reamains now except for smal businesses and some lumber industry.. We drove back up north on highway 20 and would eventually turn into highway 31 just before reaching Iona. This was a small town of about 600 people and as there are two main roads of businessed off from the main highway. It was time for dinner as we stopped at Hoogies steak House in Iona along the highway. The food was ok as I had a large piece of ham and Jacob had chicen steak. There was also a mureal on the wall of the area that had bee painted in 1950.
We continued north as we would stop at the Campbell Park that was at the base
of the Box Canyon Dam. We left here and drove about five mile before reaching
the towns of Metaline and Metaline Falls. The area has a population of 500 but
many more businesses than Iona. It was about 8:00 now and we decided to continue
north up by the Canadian border. Ther area is very isolated up here as there
were a couple homes along the main highway but very few businesses. We drove
until reaching Cresent Lake and then turned off and woudl go to the viewpoont
overlooking Boundry Dam. This is an impressive view of the canyon and the rock
formations on each side. As we walked back to our car we saw a group of about
six elk in the parking lot. As I trid to ge my camera out though they ran into
the woods. We drove back and looked at a old shack that had been here since
the logging days as it had half collapsed. We left here around 9:00 and went
just north of Metaline Falls where we stayed at a Circle Hotel. We will stay
here again if we come back as it was only $38 for two queen size beds, microwave,
fridge, outdoor hottub, and place to start fire outside for roasting marshmellows.
I'm glad we didn't camp out like we were thinking about doing. We both fell
asleep around 10:30 as it had been a long day.
I drove 450 miles today and 2450 total