Four Season Day: A Trip to the City

Here I am with my traveling companions, about to embark on an adventure... Traveling from Colbert and Nine Mile Falls two families met at the park and ride to excape the rural life and be urban for a day. Our preferred mode of transportation was the Spokane Transit Authority bus and our plan was to spend the rest of the day on foot (and wheels, for those of us who brought skateboards and scooters.)

Besides being on a trek to find a good lunch and eat some ice cream, as well as take in some city sights and sounds, we also hoped to go to a place called Wild Walls and get some rock climbing action. We bought out tickets and were soon on our way to our destination: downtown Spokane, WA. (USA)

Yahoo!

It was a stop and go ride.... picking up and dropping off people, mostly men, at every stop, but it wasn't long before we were pulling into the station.

Buses..... buses everywhere.....

Inside the Plaza are coffee shops and stores.. maps and bus schedules... and a lot of intersting things to see as well, like a painted picture of a barnstorming biplane flying under the Monroe St. Bridge!

There were people selling Avon and resting at resting spots. Quite a few people were just milling around and others, like us, were going places....

Then we hit the street.

First stop was a shop called Simply Northwest. This is a good place to purchase souvenirs. The nice lady gave us a traveling map and some coupons for a good deal on ice cream at a nearby ice cream place too.

Off we went... simply following the red brick road!

Beautiful! Interesting sights and sounds were everywhere.

We visited a music store, a pawn shop,
several restaurants, a market,

a bank, a book store, a game shop,

the visitor's center,

and rode escalators and walked alleyways...

You just never know what you will find in an alleyway. Even in an alleyway though, there is always blue sky above....

At the visitor's center we found lots of great information about Spokane, and some nest trinkets too... like Washington "animal cookies"

and (my personal favorite find o de day,) Marmots!

If you live in, or around Spokane, you kow what marmots are.

PS Do not feed wild marmots... and do not feed them animal cookies either! (Marmots need to do marmot work and not mooch off the freewill offerings of passerby. If you feed the marmots, they will refuse to be marmots and always expect handouts. They then abandon marmot ways and act more like rats.. or other gnarly things that are bad for marmanity. So, please, don't feed the marmots if you see them up close and personal.)

Wild Walls was crowded.. really crowded this day, so we didn't get any rock climbing in.... (some of us went later.... instead, )but we still had more exploring to do
We stopped and read the day's headlines in the news....

and ventured off to the mall.

River Park Square is the name of this mall. We saw an art exhibit. This one was full of beautiful photography... albeit photography depicting poverty on the other side of the world.. in Ethiopia and place in Africa. I think the exhibit promoted the organization World Vision.

Then, we were off....

......to see what we could see.. to see what we could see....
(you know the song)

We found several stores... selling interesting things..

and we also found our new friends, Ben, and Jerry...
and from whom we bought ice cream shakes.... and promptly slurped them up.

Then it was time to head back to the Park and Ride....
after a long day of walking the city streets talking to people, making new friends along the way... as well as meeting old ones! (We did a lot of that today. We even read about a friend in the paper at Chili's Restaurant when we were having lunch!)

There is a couple things about a trip to the city that you should note... just in case you make one yourself one day....

That is, you make friends on buses and bus benches, and make friends with shop keepers and passer-bys too, that is if you take time to say hello, (or if you offer them your food.....) Also, there is a lot to see and do. It's a different world when you are traveling... exploring... going on an adventure. if you will.... and it's a good reminder of this adventure called life that we are in. But it wears you out too.

Afterwards, you just want to put your feet up and take a rest.....
that is, until you are reminded of all the places your shoe covered feet have been.

Yes, this was our adventure.... a day trip on the city bus to Spokane. We bohemians hope to have many more, and write about them too....
IT was great! Fantastic.. wonderfully educational, enlightening and just plain fun!

But every adventure is sometime over.