Spokane to Sand Point, Idaho

All day long I had all of these thoughts about things to remember for this blog. Now that it’s time to post, I can’t remember them. So. The day. We are so much farther north than we are used to. The sun is up by 4:30 in the morning. We all took note of that and then fell back to sleep until a slightly more reasonable hour. We took a nice pre-breakfast walk around Spokane, explores the park and falls there. Saw some furry little animals that we are pretty sure were marmots. Found a nice little cafe for breakfast and enjoyed the cool morning air while dining outside. The boys showed their Texas roots by shivering all through breakfast. It was 65 degrees! After a quick stop to check out of the hotel we headed to a fun little tram ride to get a great view of the falls. That pretty much wrapped up our time in Spokane. There was a giant radio flyer wagon in the park. We have this amazing picture of the boys when they were small in our identical, but much smaller, wagon. Their faces in that picture are just full of the happiness only kids seem to have. Everything is magic. The boys were going to climb up into the giant wagon for some pictures, but it was not meant to be. Someone was sleeping in it . Anyway...

We hit the road after all of that and headed into Idaho - the 43rd state I have now visited. It was not a terribly long drive from Spokane, and being in the far northern and very skinny bit of Idaho, we continued to pick up this great feel good best of the 80s radio station. The music brought back many fun memories of middle school dances, early highschool years. In lieu of lunch we headed to Farragut State Park, the largest state park in Idaho. There are many things to do in the park, but a couple caught our attention today. Ben especially wanted to try the Tree2Tree ropes course. I left the do or pass decision up to Mike. He’s just terribly uncomfortable with heights and absolutely hates ladders. But, he didn’t want to keep us from doing it, and he decided to give it a go too. There’s lots of pre-course training involved and we learned all about the harnesses, click-ins, our zip line attachment, and all the fun obstacles we would encounter. We all breezes through the practice course 3 feet off the ground. The real deal was a bit more intimidating for some. Ben and Alex headed off with no hesitation. I let Mike go ahead of me so I could cheer him on and do he wouldn’t have to watch me, which makes him just as uncomfortable. I think the first ladder was the worst for him, but he got through it and did great. As for me, I have no issues with heights. Not gonna lie, even without that obstacle it was a bit breath-catching at times. We all pushed ourselves, we all exceeded our own expectations, and we all had a blast. And, we would all do it again in a heartbeat, especially the zip lines! Oh... and Ben is definitely the ropes champ, that boy is a climbing little monkey!

Next stop in the park was the Museum at the Brig. During WWII,  the park was a large snack training facility. A lot of interesting history in the museum. Our final stop was a view over the lake. 4th deepest lake in the US I think. The name escapes me st the moment, but i’ll Look it up later.

To round out our day we drove through the little town of Bay View on route to Sand Point. Sand Point is a cute little town. Right outside the hotel is a little beach area. The high in this area today was 80. There were many people swimming in the icy water. The boys and I put our feet in, it did feel amazing. The cool water is definitely inviting, but I still am not sure I would have gone all in! Who would have thought we would find a little beach in Idaho? We walked into town for dinner, was a lovely evening to eat outside again. It’s supposed to drop down to 50 tonight.

Tomorrow we head to Glacier National Park. This has been on my bucket list for awhile. Looks like the weather will be cool, the forecast has changed and cooled off a bit.

We’ve visited the Pacific Northwest several times now. Someday...