Coeur d'Alene, Spokane, and Pullman

Wednesday: In the morning we went to the park in Coeur d'Alene to take pictures next to this sculpture of a moose and a mouse.  It sounds weird, but there are five of these sculptures around the city as part of a children's book a man wrote about some of the places in Coeur d'Alene.  For my mom's birthday one year while he was on his mission Derrick gave this book to my mom.  So now my nieces read it and love it!  So obviously we needed to take pictures!

Mom and Dad next to Mudge and Millie

Silly Dad

Derrick and I next to Mudge and Millie

Afterward, we drove along a road that put us right next to the lake.  It was super pretty.  And it was fun for us to look at all of the houses down there.  We found a couple for sale...just 1.1 million dollars.  No biggy.  I guess Derrick is going to have to become really, really rich someday to get his dream of having a second home there.

Coeur d'Alene Lake

After stopping in Harrison to eat lunch and explore the small town for a few minutes, we made our way to Spokane.  We checked into our hotel and then decided our first stop would be Gonzaga University, since it was so close to our hotel.  There is something so cool about a college campus.  I don't know why I love it so much, but I do.  The grounds were beautiful and I decided if I went there I would probably study outside every day.  It has a much smaller population of students than BYU, so it was cool to see how different it was.  In the middle of the campus was a concrete wall that people had spray painted with a bunch of marriage congratulations.  We had a good time joking about how big of a wall would be necessary for that at BYU, and really USU, too.

Marriage wall

We went to the church they have on campus, which was super cool.  I love old Catholic churches because they are just so dang pretty!  And the stained glass windows were incredible.  Then, obviously, we had to check out their basketball arena and get some pictures next to the huge statue of their bulldog.  Dinner that night was super good too.  And after we went to Babies 'R Us to get a gift for the baby of one of Derrick's converts from his mission that we went to dinner with the next day and I discovered that I should never go back there because I wanted to buy everything in the store and I don't even have kids yet!  Geez!

Me with the Bulldog

Derrick with the Bulldog

Side view (it's huge!)

Front view of arena

Thursday: In the morning we went over to Riverside Park and rode the Skyride over the Spokane Falls.  Then we walked around the park and looked at all of the fun rides and the modern art they have there.  They have some pretty cool stuff, including a giant red wagon and a statue of a bunch of people running.

Derrick on the slide (notice the child hanging upside down on the bottom of the slide)

Me on the slide

Derrick and I showing how big it is

Big Red Wagon in Riverside Park

Mom and Dad running with the sculptures

We were going to go to a science center, but it turns out it didn't open until the next day.  Bummer.  So instead we went back to Gonzaga and walked through their art museum. There was some pretty cool stuff, but I must admit, I didn't understand a lot of it.  Once we were done there we drove down to Pullman, Washington.  But on the way we stopped at this natural landmark thing that I can't remember the name of.  It was super cool though because it was very high and you could see for miles in all directions.

Mom and I on the top

View from the top

Once we got checked into our hotel in Pullman we went up and walked around Washington State's campus.  Again, it was so cool.  There were trees everywhere and all of the buildings were this deep, red brick that is just beautiful.  We stopped and watched the football team practice for a few minutes and the football stadium was actually open, so we walked in there for a minute too.

Washington State's first week of football practice

That night we had dinner with Ashley and her family.  We actually met Ashley and her mom before because they came and visited us one time when they came to Salt Lake.  They are super cute and it was fun to talk to them.

Friday: We didn't spend much time in Pullman before we went to pick up Jordan Pitt from his brother's house in Moscow, Idaho.  Jordan had flown out to visit his brother, so we picked him up and all of us drove down to Riggins, Idaho where we ate lunch at this great diner run by these two funny old ladies who made everything from scratch, which means is it was way good, before rafting down the Salmon River.  Rafting was fun because it was calm enough a lot of times for us to just relax and float, but there were definitely some big rapids.  We pulled over to this sandy beach at one point and Jordan had a good time trying to catch the teeny fish, which he successfully did a couple of times.  Once we got back we drove back down to Mountain Home to stay the night there.

Saturday: The breakfast provided by the hotel was actually at Winger's, which was weird, but kind of fun.  At least we got to watch the Olympics while we ate.  We drove the rest of the way home while listening to the last part of the Hunger Games series, talking, laughing, and playing our own version of "Real or Not Real."

It was a lot of time in the car, but overall it was a super fun trip!