Guess What This Is?

Clark Fork River Rafting

As part of the end of the year program for ASNIC we loaded up the vans and cursed over to the Clark Fork River. I left about three hours before the rest of the group so that I could secure a campsite at the Forest Grove Fishing access. I arrived and parked in the site we wanted, set up the camper, and sat out in the sun looking at the river.

I had a wonderfully quiet two hour wait for the vans to arrive and I really took advantage of the time to sleep and wander about the camping area.

When everyone arrived they set up the tents and then immediately started playing Bolo Toss. I cooked dinner; we had barbecue chicken and all the fixings. By the end of dinner it was late and everyone sat around the fire telling stories and playing games. I went to bed about 10:30PM, I don't know when all the student crawled into their sleeping bags.

The next morning we ate breakfast and packed up to hit the river. The video shows the river trip, and the ride home was uneventful. Traditionally we burn up a raft after a Clark Fork Trip, but this year we just drove home.

http://www.nic.edu/activities/raft/

We'll call it a good weekend!

Saturday we drove into Spokane to go to Manito Park to walk around, we never made it to the park, and we ended up at Riverside State Park. It’s a long story which revolves around our search for Panda Express.

As we drove into visit Manito, I mentioned it was time to get some food. My mouth is still a bit sensitive from getting my wisdom teeth out, so we decided that I could eat the noodles at Panda, while Linda had her usual. This discussion took place just a bit after we passed the Valley Mall exit, the one place we know that there is a Panda. I though, no problem, there are Pandas all over the place, boy was I wrong!

We drove up to the Manito Park area and didn’t spot a Express so we kept going way up on the South Hill to the Prairie area, but failed to spot a place to eat. I circled back and then we headed North out Division and failed to find one along there either. I believe that they were hiding all the Panda Expresses as an experiment to see just when Linda would start getting surly. We past North Town and at that point I said that we would find a Panda or else. Can you believe that I never saw one the rest of the day?

We ended up eating at Qudoba, which we really like anyway. I had pulled pork which was easy to eat so all the hunting had been in vain. We had passed about five Qudobas and a million SUBWAYs, but once we had our sights on the Panda all else was lost.

Since we were out that far north we headed west and found our way to Riverside State Park where we took a beautiful hike on the west s

ide of the river. We crossed over the bridge at the Bowl and Pitcher and turned north on the trail. There were a million hikers on the trail and it was a good “teachable moment” hike for Kobi. We returned to the Jeep and on the way home we stopped at REI. We didn’t find anything at any of the stores we visited, so we came home, ate dinner, and watched some TV. Linda mentioned taking a ride on Sunday and the planning began.

Sunday morning we packed all our biking gear in the Jeep, loaded the bikes and took off to Enaville to ride the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes. I figured we would get there and ride about ten miles and call it good. Oh, I forgot who I was with. We rode about 25 miles total. Linda did a bunch more because her training called for sprint intervals so she would spring out and then ride back to meet me. It is the human way of playing fetch, like with Kobi; except there is no stick and Linda always came back without me getting mad.

The trail was real busy today, everyone really in anxious to get out and have some fun in the warmer weather. The ride was beautiful and it really pooped me out. I took a few pictures; I like the one of Linda in my bike mirror. It’s titled, “You bet I got yelled at for that one.” I would rate our weekend, pretty darned good, and I am glad the weather held out so we could make the best of it.