Lake Coeur d’Alene
After visiting the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, ID area for a few days, we closed up our home and moved onto “Big Sky Country” – Montana. We stopped for an overnight stay in St Regis, MT and now we are in a great RV Park (Jim & Mary’s RV Park) in Missoula for the Independence Day weekend. We’d previously found out the hard way that it’s important to reserve space on holiday weekends well in advance!
If you look at our states visited page, you’ll see that we added Montana but not Idaho. Our rule for coloring in a state is that we must have first stayed overnight in that state. Since we drove straight through Idaho (and just the narrow panhandle at that), it doesn’t get colored! And there is so much more to see of Idaho that we just can’t wait to return.
We have experienced quite a change in geography over the last two months. We started with the beautiful and rugged rocky coast of Oregon, crossed the Pacific Coast Range, followed the Columbia River Gorge, crossed into Washington and seeing Mt Ranier in the distance, experienced the absolute beauty of Lake Coeur d’Alene (seen in the above phot0), and then into Montana crossing the Bitterroot Mountains. Soon we will crossing the Rockies and the Continental Divide!
While staying in Spokane, we drove a short hop to Coeur d”Alene to see the gorgeous lake and to have a picnic lunch at a city park bordering the lake. There is a huge resort right on the lake with a marina that has a 3300′ floating boardwalk (the world’s longest) surrounding it. We walked the entire thing including the raised bridge you can see in the picture for the boast to enter and exit the marina.
Lake Coeur d’Alene
World’s longest floating boardwalk – Lake Coeur d’Alene
McEuen Park – Lake Coeur d’Alene
The last day in Spokane we went to Manito Park which consists of several gardens, a conservatory, a lake, lots of open space and trails, and undeveloped areas. We first visited the Japanese garden which was very peaceful and cool (appreciated since it was a warm day!). We then walked to the Rose Garden which had too many varieties of beautiful roses to even mention, and then onto Duncan Garden which was a huge plaza with many colorful plantings of annuals.
Spokane Nishinomiya Garden
Spokane Nishinomiya Garden
Rose Garden at Manito Park
Duncan Garden at Manito Park
After arriving in Missoula, we checked out the downtown First Friday Gallery Walk. The streets were alive with people and the galleries had free food and drink. We crossed the bridge across the Clark Fork River where we saw people cooling off by wading and tubing.
Downtown Missoula
Clark Fork River running through Missoula
Last night we heard fireworks from the local farm team ballpark. Early this morning we went to two of the farmers’ markets downtown. We were impressed by the amount of local produce and how artfully and neatly it was displayed!
Missoula Farmers’ Market
Missoula Farmers’ Market
We have two more days in Missoula before we head north to Glacier National Park on Tuesday.