Charming Coeur d’Alene

Gary and I both fell in love with the Coeur d’Alene area, another location we wouldn't mind spending a month in during the summer.  Coeur d'Alene is a beautiful, charming city right on the lake that features a strategically located park right along the sandy shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene.  Here are a few pictures of the inviting beach.  I think we were lucky because most of the tourists were gone since we were here after Labor Day!

It was such a beautiful, sunny day so I took off my sandals and dipped my feet into the nice, refreshing, temperate lake water.

 

This little “creek” runs through part of the park and empties into Lake Coeur d’Alene.

 

Hunting is big in this area (as it is in most of the Pacific Northwest) and one of the hunted is moose.  Sadly, we never saw a moose while we were here except Mudgy.  This bronze of Mudgy is one of five statues on the 2-1/4 mile Mudgy Moose Trail that meanders along Lake Coeur d’Alene and through downtown Coeur d’Alene.  Want to know more about Mudgy?  Click on this link:  http://www.coeurdalene.org/mm/about_trail.html

We had a couple of great meals in town, one where we sat outside street-side on a perfect evening (called Cricket's), and met a couple from Canada who were vacationing.  We had a great time chatting it up with them. The other was on Monday night at a sports bar, Capone's, that was jam-packed with football fans enjoying the great ale on tap, the delicious bar food, and a good football game (which is why we were there!).  It was an interesting mixture of both young and old.

During our stroll along the main street, I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this frieze on the outside of a bank.  It really caught my eye.  On the face of this rather large brick building this was the only block that was strategically sculpted.

One last note, a number of the Pacific Northwest cities feature bountiful hanging baskets along their main corridors.  This is just one of many flower-filled baskets that we have seen in our Oregon-Washington-Idaho travels, and this one was in Coeur d’Alene on their main drag.

 

Isaiah 40:8 // The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.