28 July - Boat Trip on the Spokane River

28 July

Today we headed back to Coeur d'Alene ID to visit John and Donna Schwandt again. John worked for the US Forest Service here and also volunteered his expertise to Coeur d'Alene with their parks. He was honored with his name engraved in a large rock in Coeur d'Alene Park and we wanted to take a picture of it, so we headed down there first. Unfortunately the rock had been temporarily relocated while they do some renovations, but we did get to see a very old carousel.

The Coeur d’Alene Carousel is dated back to the 1940’s and was located where Independence Pier is now. One of the local TV stations reported that eventually the pier fell into disrepair and the carousel mysteriously vanished.  The entire carousel appeared next in the late 1980s at an auction in western Washington, where reportedly it was bought by a couple from Oregon. They leased it out over the next several years and it went across the continent several times.   In 2010, a local couple saw an article about the carousel in the newspaper. They bought it the next year and brought it back to Coeur d’Alene.

What the carousel looked like back in the day.

The carousel is now located in this building in Coeur d'Alene Park.

The carousel has been beautifully restored and is fully operational.

 Vimeo Video of the Carousel  Click here

Also located in the park is the Memorial Field semi-pro baseball field which is under renovation now as well.

Beautiful old stadium that will host games again soon.

You can almost hear the cheer of the fans here.

We finished up at the park and then made our way down to the new home of John and Donna's friend Karen who owns the boat.  She is a recent widower and built a $1.5M house right on the Spokane River.  She has her own boat slip with an automatic lift and a beautiful pontoon boat with a couple jet skis.  She took us on a cruise down the river about 6 miles and then returned.

This guy has his own airplane right on the river.

The turn around point is just short of Black Bay Park, at the site of a huge house that just happens to be for sale! The first $9M will take it. John's friend said it was built in 1995 by a local family who made their fortune in Amway.   It is a 28,500-square-foot mansion with 13 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, a 10-car garage and three docks on the Spokane River. It includes four separate residences, the primary house, two for the kids and one for the maintainer.  A saltwater pool. A tennis court. A home theater. An outdoor kitchen area that is larger than most indoor kitchens. The sale listing compares it to Disneyland.

So it was a very nice boat ride.  When we returned we toured Karen's new house which will soon be shown during the local home show and then she will move in.  Gorgeous!  We headed back to John's house to pick up Liberty and again, return to the campground.  Tonight I am getting caught up on the blog.  We watched the recording of today's Cubs-Brewers game and later some recorded BattleBots shows.

Tomorrow we will tear down everything outside here at the RV in preparation for departure, then head back to Coeur d'Alene for the last time to have dinner at John and Donnas with Bob and Phyllis.  Sunday morning we pull chocks and head to St Regis MT for a couple nights and then on to Helena MT and Ft Harrison Army national Guard base FamCamp.