Riverfront Park in Spokane, WA Part One

In August The Man, Munchkin and I traveled to our niece’s wedding in Helena, MT.  It was 520 miles and even though it’s doable in a day, we decided to break the trip into two days.  We spent the night (both ways) in Spokane, WA.  We got there in the late afternoon (driving with a pregnant lady= lots of potty breaks!) and wanted to get out and explore and let Munchkin burn off some energy.  We did some internet searching before heading out and I found out about Riverfront Park.  It sounded great, with a carousel and other things to explore.  Once we found our hotel we dropped off our bags and headed out.





The park was only a few blocks from our hotel and hard to miss!  The first thing we after we parked and were walking up to the park was a huge water fountain.  Munchkin kept saying “Water! Water!”  She would have run into it, or at least tried to if we let her.  All her clothes were back at the hotel and it wasn’t that late.  You could smell the chlorine in the water and there were a few other kids running in and out of the streams of water so I’m guessing it’s a pretty popular place on a hot day!



The carousel is right next to the fountain so we headed there next.  Munchkin was excited to see the horses.  The Man & I both rode (2 and under ride free with paying adult) with Munchkin.  Munchkin likes it when daddy rider behind her on the horse so they shared one and Punkin and I had another.  I was on the outside and was able to grab for the brass ring-which I didn’t get.  I found it a little hard to grab the rings as they were plastic and so lightweight.  Munchkin enjoyed playing with a couple of the rings that I grabbed.  It wasn’t the easiest reaching out to grab the rings with my center off balance but I was very happy I didn’t fall off the horse!  The carousel was going quite fast and we all enjoyed it.  As we were leaving a couple gave us a ticket that still had some rides left on it.  We decided to hold on to it for now and keep exploring the park.



As we were driving past the park on our way in we saw a HUGE Radio Flyer wagon so we wanted to find it.  It wasn’t hard, we just followed the path.  As we turned the corner there were a bunch of cement blocks with letters on them and behind it was the wagon.  It’s huge!  It’s also a slide and the underneath part has monkey bars.  Of course there were kids all over it.  Munchkin made a beeline towards it and wanted to do what everyone else was doing.  She’s been a little afraid of slides ever since she fell off one from going to fast down it.   There’s usually no problem getting her up…it’s getting her down.  So The Man went with her to help coax her down and ride down with her if he needed too.  She climbed those stairs with her little legs, super excited.  You could just see it on her face.  She walked around the people at the top and went right to the slide.  I stood at the bottom and before I could say much of anything, down she went!  She LOVED it!  The slide was fast but she slowed down towards the bottom and was able to get off and not fall off.  She loved it so much she went right back around to do it again.  We let her go down several times before convincing her we should keep exploring.  She LOVED that slide.





  
 
When we were walking to the slide, we walked under a bridge and there were some kids playing on the rocks on the side.  Munchkin loves rocks and since she had seen big kids climbing those rocks she wanted climb them too. when we were walking back.  So my two year old started bouldering.  We were right there but even if we weren’t she would have kept climbing!  She’s not afraid of much and is an adrenaline junkie.  We both think she’s going to be a roller coaster lover (which is more than ok with us!)  Once we managed to tear her away from the rocks we decided to walk across the river and see what else there was to see.  Munchkin found more rocks to climb (of course) and we walked by the clock tower.  We found some amusement park type rides but they were closed so we kept walking.  We also found where they do horsey rides but they weren’t open.  Munchkin has been showing an interest in horses so we decided to try to come back and see if they were open when we were driving home and stopping in Spokane again.  We also saw an electric train giving a tour of the park.  In our explorations we found where the train started from but decided to wait on that one too.  Instead we did a gondola ride to see some waterfalls.



 





 

We were there for about two and half hours before I needed to eat.  We had only scratched the surface of exploring it so we decided to return on our way back home from the wedding.  It was really nice to have something to look forward to doing when we came back!