Spokane

Last week Angie and I decided to spend the weekend in Spokane. So we did! There was a lot we’ve heard about to do there and we wanted to go to the temple anyways, so off we went. Spokane is the second largest city in Washington and is known as the Inland Empire, home to about 500,000 residents and a pleasant 90-minute drive away. Our area’s temple is on the south end of town in a really pretty pine-forested area. We got to see it, but were bummed to find out it was closed for cleaning (also, we later found out that you have to schedule appointments if you want to do temple work. Now we know). We spent the morning downtown at this great riverfront park where they had some really cool things like a giant red wagon that was a slide. The park itself was right downtown and really pretty. I guess they’d had the World’s Fair there in the 70’s so they had all this cool stuff then. Within walking distance, the Spokane River runs over some falls that were really cool to watch. We drove north of town to this cat zoo were they take care of all kinds of big cats that people owned privately or found locally and gave to the facility to care for. They had Tigers from circus shows and private owners (Washington’s pet laws are pretty loose), a male lion, some jaguars, a couple cougars that were causing problems in local neighborhoods, and even a black bear. It was really cool, plus they had this tiger statue that you could climb on, so I got to fulfill every kids fantasy of riding a fierce battle cat like heman. From there we drove to Green Bluff, which is an agricultural area consisting of about 30 farms and every weekend is like this huge fair where each of the farms have all these events and vendors and fruit picking, amazing cider, shooting pumpkins from cannons, corn/hedge mazes, live music and just all kinds of stuff. There were thousands of cars all along the little country road that cuts through to all of the farms. It was really cool. On our way back we stopped in town to eat at a little burger place that was shaped like a milk can. Angie loved it. It was a fun weekend and we feel like we know Spokane a little better now.