Last week I filled the blog with an entire week’s posts in my Great Hymns of the Faith series. I did this because I was spending the week in Spokane, WA, at Gonzaga University taking the “campus immersion” class that is part of my online master’s degree through Gonzaga.
This week I am going to do several posts off the trip. Let’s call it a travelogue of sorts.
I stayed at the Montvale Hotel in downtown Spokane, on the south side of the river. The Gonzaga campus is just to the north of the river, on the east side of the city. The distance between the two is 1.5 miles, about a 30-minute walk.
I could have chosen a closer place to stay, but everything else was at least $100 a night before taxes. I stayed at less than $90 a night including taxes. The one other perk was it gave me a chance to walk through the downtown twice a day — including the riverfront park that is such a central feature of Spokane.
From the look of it, Riverfront Park used to be an island in the middle of the Spokane river, but the one branch of the river was joined with the island to form a peninsula. Water still flows down that branch, and goes through turbines to generate electricity. On the other branch of the river are the palls in Spokane river.
The entire island, or peninsula, is a park, along with sections of the shore on either side. There are many ways to walk, or ride bicycles around the island, and multiple bridges on and off that connect all areas of the central city on both shores, north and south. multiple vehicle bridges also cross, without conflicting with the pedestrian paths.
The island has various interesting sculptures, artwork, an Imax theater, and carnival type rides and attractions. There are even sky cars you can ride that take you through the air over the falls and back.
All in all it is a very friendly and elegant downtown.
At The Rainbow 