And a Garbage-Eating Goat Sculpture
Day 103 – July 12, 2003 – Saturday
Spokane, Washington. We decided to spend a leisurely day here today and complete the catch-up work on the web site photos. Spokane is a lovely town, and it seems like an especially nice place to live and raise a family.
The highlights in Spokane are along the Spokane River where Spokane has an exceptionally nice park called Riverfront Park. The Marriott Courtyard sits right on the river, so we just walked out the door and began our walk on the Centennial Trail.
Just across the river is Gonzaga University. Gonzaga gained prominence recently due to an exceptional basketball team. Back in 1887, Father Cataldo started Gonzaga University as a mission school for Indians. Gonzaga’s most famous dropout was local boy Bing Crosby.
The river is very pretty — lots of ducks, geese, and beautiful landscaping and bridges. The river flows through two falls that are used to generate electricity. Spokane has a wonderfully designed Convention Center right along the river and Waterfront Park.
Riverfront Park is home to a lot of great art — wonderful sculptures of all shapes and sizes. An absolute highlight was the World’s Largest Radio Flyer Wagon. It’s huge! The wheels are about 8-feet in diameter. Children of all ages climb the ladder in the back, and slide down the slide built into the handle.
Bozzie Jane did reconnaissance work on pies today. The Desk Clerk at the Marriott said Cyrus O’Leary’s was THE place to go — famous for homemade pies. It was just past the big red wagon, so we stopped for lunch and pie. Our waitress, Mariah, was just darling. She’s a senior at the University of Wyoming majoring in chemistry. She will either go to graduate school or law school. She’ll be a big success at whatever she does — sharp young lady and delightful to talk with. We also had a great time talking with Chris, the manager. Chris told us a lot about Spokane, the two big annual events, and he suggested some spots we need to see in Idaho tomorrow. Our lunch was great, and we really enjoyed the pies. We narrowed our want list to three, and we had Sizzling Skillet Apple Pie, Sour Cream Lemon Pie, and Boysenberry Pie. The Sour Cream Lemon won the best citrus pie in America in a contest last year. All were excellent!
We rolled out of Cyrus O’Leary’s and headed back to Waterfront Park to see the absolutely gorgeous fully-restored 1909 Loof Carrousel. It was originally located at Spokane’s Natatorium Park. We sat and watched children riding. Beautiful hand-carved horses and animals.
Right near the Carrousel is an incredibly unique piece of art — a Garbage Eating Goat Sculpture. Boz held a piece of paper under the goat’s mouth, and it was immediately sucked up. The trash passes through the goat and out its rear end into a trash compactor. What a hoot!
Chris told us that Spokane has two huge events. Hoopfest is the World’s Largest 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament, and Bloomsday Run is the World’s Largest Individually-Timed Road Race. 43,000 people race in the Bloomsday Run. There is a wonderful sculpture commemorating the race in Waterfront Park just across from City Hall. It wraps a corner and features sculptures of perhaps a hundred runners. Very unique and impressive.
We visited the Spokane Falls, and we walked by the IMAX Theatre, and the U.S. Pavillion Entertainment Center.
The center of Waterfront Park has a beautiful Clock Tower. It was constructed in 1902 and was originally part of the Great Northern Railroad depot.
We walked the Centennial Trail along the Spokane River and Waterfront Park.
We thoroughly enjoyed a relaxing afternoon just walking through Waterfront Park. We took a late afternoon nap — perhaps the first such nap in 103 days, and we just relaxed in the room and watched a little TV and worked on the website this evening. A nice, relaxing day!
And a Garbage-Eating Goat Sculpture
The Daily Journal of Round America:
Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.
You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this web site. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest and the full itinerary is shown.