To quote an Alice Cooper song that my dad sang to me every year at about this time:
As this school year was bit odd due to the great pandemic, we decided to celebrate wrapping things up by having a hike and a lunch out. My neighbor has four boys, and as most of our children are teens, they of course could not have cared less about the hike and were more about where we were going to eat. Okay, they liked the hike too, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Even though I have lived in North Idaho for almost twenty years, I still am finding out new things about my homeland all of the time. The Post Falls Community Forest is one of those new things. I have been to Q'emilin Park in Post Falls loads of times, as we tend to have our annual 4H BBQ there, but until yesterday I had never trod the trails that meander through the forest next to the park.
Let me tell you, the landscape between Spokane, Washington, Post Falls, Idaho, and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho is pretty urban and populated, so you can image my surprise as we wandered into a wild and secluded rocky canyon right in the middle of town. All of the trails in the forest are marked by colored symbols. I think we were on the blue circle trail, but all I know is that I am still flabbergasted that there was a canyon, and a respectable sized one at that!
The trails and park are set on the banks of the Spokane River so there are all sorts of beautiful views to behold and little hidden beaches to discover. People who like to boulder and rock climbing have many different faces to scramble up, and part of the allure of the hike was getting to randomly behold climbers doing their thing.
Of course, as our children are special variants of human, most of them jumped in the river to cool off. It should be noted that right now is the height of snow melt off and the river is only slightly above popsicle in temperature. I was assured by my son that it was okay as he couldn't feel anything anyway after he completely submerged his carcass. No thank you!
Another neat feature is checking out the dams. I believe there are three of the them throughout the gorge, but we just walked down a concrete sidewalk to check out the one nearest the parking lot as I was trying to locate the start of the purple diamond trail that runs along the river and connects into a bigger loop that is about five miles. That is to be my next hiking trail adventure.
All in all, if you happen to be in the Post Falls area and feel like a little stroll, the trails that start on the edge of Q'emilin park are so worth a look. The rock climbing scene is pretty great for novices or folk who just want to scale some granite, and there are lots of little side trails for those who just want some solitude.
Later, as we all sat in a restaurant for the first time in months, we decided that the day had been pretty smashing indeed. I am still slightly marveling over how my neighbor's son, a stick thin boy of fifteen, ate an entire fourteen inch pizza pan piled with Idaho nachos. Idaho nachos are waffle fries topped with cheese, tomatoes, onions, pulled pork or beef, olives, and sour cream. It is a huge pile of food meant to be shared with a few and that kid just demolished it. Of course, my son ate an entire twelve inch pepperoni pizza so I can't say much. Over the course of the meal I was also reminded how much it hurts my pocketbook to take teenagers out to eat at a restaurant, the things you forget in quarantine I tell ya!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's currently covered in pine pollen iPhone.
