17-19JUN08 - Spokane, WA

After leaving Deer Lodge, MT, we decided to head to nearest military base on our route with a RV facility and spend a couple of days doing little or nothing. This turned out to be Fairchild AFB just to the west of Spokane, WA. But first we had to make a “traditional” family stop at the world famous 50,000 Silver Dollar Bar, Casino, Motel, Restaurant and all around tourist trap in Haugan, MT (Exit 16 on I-90). Four generations of Ryans have made it a point to stop at this establishment any time they were traveling on old US 10, now I-90. After the obligatory stop at the Silver Dollar, we soon arrived at Fairchild AFB and set up camp.

http://public.fairchild.amc.af.mil/

The next day, Wednesday, we went into Spokane to explore the city, especially the site of the 1974 World’s Fair now called Riverfront Park. In the summer of 1974 Spokane was the smallest city ever to host a World’s Fair. Dan and his two younger brothers (Shawn & Gary) packed Dan’s car with camping gear and headed east to check it out. They decided to camp at Mt Spokane State Park, which only had ten camp sites. The entire way up the mountain there were signs saying “Park Full”, “No Camp Sites”. When they got to the park it was completely empty, turns out the Rangers left the signs up most of the time. Most of the Fair buildings are gone, but the City was left with a beautiful 100 acre park called Riverfront Park. The Spokane Falls cut through one edge of the park and have several pedestrian bridges over them to enjoy the view. We were fortunate that the Falls were running very high because of the recent snow melt.

Throughout the Park are various sculptures, there is even a walking map provided to explain each piece of art (unfortunately we did not know about the map until later). But we did discover several like the Big Red Wagon; the Trash Eating Goat (the goat’s mouth will suck up trash in your hand and shoot it out its rearend into a dumpster); and “The Joy of Running Together” depicting runners of all kinds - it celebrates the Spokane tradition of Bloomsday, the largest timed road running race in the world. Also in the Park is a Looff “Coney Island” Carrousel from 1909. Looff carved and built the first carousel on Coney Island and is credited with developing the coney island style of carousels.

http://expo74.brandx.net/index.html

http://www.spokaneriverfrontpark.com/index.php

http://spokanecarrousel.org/

For lunch we headed to Frank’s Diner. This Diner was an original dining car that was used by a Railroad CEO and his friends, needless to say it is very beautiful inside. Then it was a Diner in Seattle until being moved to Spokane in the 1990s. Frank’s is known for their breakfasts. So even though it was lunch we order a 3 egg omelet to split, called Joe’s special. Thank goodness we split the order, because it was huge. Last tourist thing of the day was to get a picture of one of two of Spokane’s milk bottle buildings. Turns out that the Benewah Dairy Company built the two buildings in 1935 to market their products.

http://www.franksdiners.com/

Our last day at Fairchild was spent enjoying the good weather and the cleaning rig.

Trivia: There are three styles of Carousels, Coney Island being one, what are the other two?