Counting Down

We’re sadly counting down the days until Leia (this Sunday) and Cyrus (next Saturday) leave us. Leia is on summer break, kinda - she’s taking five(!!) on-line summer school classes - and her parents seem to think she should spend time with them too. Silly parents. 

After spending May in California, Cyrus has decided to go back to CO and attend college there. I was really looking forward to having a crafting/baking buddy this fall. 

We’re making the most of our remaining time. Both grand-teens have a list of places they’d like to visit. Today’s choices were Huntington Library (air quality is poor due to local wildfires, so that’s a no), The Getty (long drive, crazy traffic) and our winner - the Santa Barbara Zoo. 

Cyrus really wanted to see the condors but they were off display for habitat clean-up. Her new favorite of the day? 

Big, blue, chonky Victoria Crowned Pigeons. Aren’t they interesting??

Pop is planning to take them to the LA Natural History Museum on Saturday. Cyrus wants to have dinner on the beach and watch the sun set, so maybe Sunday or Monday night? Tuesday’s plan is revisiting her favorite thrift stores. It’ll be interesting to see what else we can cram in. 

Catching Up

We had some spare time Wednesday before our late afternoon flight 

North Spokane location

so we looked up a restaurant Rachel had recommended. 

Frank’s Diner has been a Spokane institution since 1991, serving great food in historic railway cars. (Link has interesting history of the cars)

What we didn’t realize was that there were two diners - one a couple of blocks from our hotel in Downtown and the other 30 minutes away in North Spokane. 

Guess which one we went to…. Oops!

Food was great (crispy deviled eggs are yummmmm), the rail car was fun and we had enough time so I’m glad we went. Next time we’ll try the one in downtown…

 Rhododendron 

Spokane International (GEG) is fairly small. It took us less than 30 minutes to return our rental car (and talk to the return guy for 5 minutes), walk to the opposite end of the airport to check-in, then back across for security and up and around for our gate. 

Granted it was mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, but there was no one in line at the Delta counter, one person ahead of us at security and only 3 other people waiting at our gate. I love small airports!

 Looks rough but we had only mild turbulence 

While we were away, Cyrus sent me (many!) photos of Coco Chai - Coco with Cyrus, Coco making friends with Leia, Coco being adorable.

 Coco Chai Princess Pie

The cat is shy but has gradually warmed up to us… all except for Pop. Maybe it’s his height? (It was his height with Leo’s new dog. Kenai shied away until Pop sat down, then they were best buds.) But tonight Pop was sitting on the couch and look who initiated contact….

Friends at last!

Spokane

We said goodbye to Jac and family today

She had fun getting her pants that dirty

and headed to Spokane. 

 Riverfront Park

We were scheduled to spend another night at the tiny house 

 Hotel views. We could see half the city

but driving to Spokane to sightsee, 

 Clock Tower on Spokane River

then back for the night, 

then to Spokane airport the next morning seemed a bit much (it’s 90 minutes each way…)

 Big(!) busy bumblebee 

So instead, we booked a hotel room close-ish to the airport 

 Lilacs; the wagon handle was a full-sized kids slide; one of many water features

and across the street from two things we really wanted to see this trip - 

Riverfront Park 

 Sampling of art from the park. 

and Spokane Falls. 

 Upper Falls

We walked through the park, admiring the art and water features,

 So many pedestrian bridges!

before getting to the Spokane River

 Lower Falls

and Upper and Lower Spokane Falls. 

 Looking back at Lower Falls

We took a catrillion photos (only slight exaggeration) 

 Our first view of SkyRide capsules

from every angle we could find, 

including the SkyRide capsules (so fun!)

An excellent dinner at PF Changs-

 View from SkyRide

I’m still sad the one near us closed -

 Rotary Fountain, Gesa Pavilion in the background 

then back to our corner room(!) on the 9th floor 

 Hotel carpet was pretty

to watch night fall and the city lights sparkle.

 Gesa Pavilion from our room. The colors kept changing as we watched

We fly home late tomorrow afternoon. 

 We were almost the only people on the ride. 

Looking forward to seeing Cyrus, Leia and Coco, who have been housesitting while we’re gone. 

 Artsy Lower Falls

And also planning our next trip to Spokane. 

 The river after the falls

More of the bazillion photos…

Hail Yes

Jaclyn: Let’s go for a walk Grandma. It will be fun!

River walk behind our tiny house

Also Jac: Don’t forget your raincoat just in case.

 Looking back-our house is the 3rd one, behind the tree

Mother Nature, 5 minutes later: Hahahahahahahahaha

 Watching the rain on the water as it headed our way

as she pelted us with gravel-sized hail.  

 Pink dot is Jac, outpacing me to the warm house

I stopped for less than a minute to take a video - 

Jac kept right on going, beating me to the house by enough time to strip off her soaked coat, shoes and pants and plant herself in the middle of the bed, under at least 3 blankets. 

 There was a lot more before Mother Nature was done

Such a smart girl.

Gold Mining

Our plan today was to visit two small historical towns - Kellogg and Wallace - about an hour from where we’re staying, but we had so much fun at the first stop we never made it further. 

Kellogg is home to the Crystal Gold Mine (here). Once a working mine, today it offers mine tours, gold panning, gemstone sluicing and spray painting VW Bugs(!). Something for everyone.

I was surprised how much we all enjoyed panning for gold. One of the employees gave us some useful pointers, then left us to it. Pop and Leo were very good at finding gold flakes, while Jac and I found mostly pretty rocks. 

The ‘gemstones’ were in a pre-packaged bag of sand so the girls were guaranteed to find gems. (Pay more, find more…) They were both glued to their sluice screens, concentrating on finding all they could. 

The mine tour was interesting, one of the better ones we’ve done. The mine opened in 1879, operated during the 1880’s, 

then was boarded up and forgotten until a century later. It was rediscovered in 1991 during nearby freeway construction.

Interesting tidbits: gold was found only in veins of quartz; no white rocks, no yellow gold. 

The mine is 900’ underground 

and (Jac was not happy to discover) it is pitch black when the lights are out. 

Several flooded areas have healthy groups of fish; the water is clear and fresh. 

Colors of Smithsonite reflect the minerals in the rock - purple is manganese, blue is cobalt, green is copper, orange/brown is iron and black is silver. Although there’s silver in the rock, it wasn’t mined because it wasn’t valuable in the 1880’s. 

Black lines are silver

There are a few places with gold still visible. 

 Small veins of gold

There’s also a rare example of naturally-occurring silver wire, which is 100% pure silver. 

 Rare silver wire

We weren’t expecting a lot but this turned out to be a great place to visit. One nice thing about visiting off-season is the lack of crowds and more personalized attention. Nobody was rushing us and we ended up staying almost 3 hours.