Sunday, August 14: Riverfront Park, Part 1

In Your Face! Round and round the Riverfront Park.
Maybe it's not fair to compare Spokane's Riverfront Park to Seattle and Portland's waterfront since Spokane is a much smaller city. But ... it's easier to get to. No winos. Only saw one homeless lady making camp. Easy to navigate. Not too crowded. LUVed it!
A visit to the Loof Carrousel is a must. Oh, let me rephrase that. Don't just visit it. RIDE it!
Each carving is different and unique. Different jewels. Different designs. Which one? Which one?! I had my heart set on the tiger ... with the monkey on his back.
But so did a father with his little girl. After boarding the carousel, I realized the tiger doesn't move. The giraffe is also stationary as are the benches with the dragon side-arms. SO, I opted for a goat. The only thing better than getting to ride a carousel when you're (almost) 55 is being joined by your husband! Neither one of us had happy childhoods. Maybe that's why we are still so in touch with our inner child ... He tried to grab the brass ring. He got a lot of them, but not the brass one. But that was OK. So what if we didnt' get a free ride? We just paid for two more:) I rode a beautiful horse that time around. After walking around the park*, we raced back to the carousel with hopes of one more ride, but the girls closed shop 5 minutes early. Back in our hotel room, Rod tossed me one of the plastic rings.

How Many Rings?
Our plastic rings are supposed to be returned after each ride is over. However, a few rings do leave the building. How many? According to the Dana Saad company (who provide the rings for our carousel), our carousel requires 50,000 rings each year. This means that there's about one ring taken for every 6 riders. So it's likely that about 3,500,000 rings have disappeared from our carousel since 1909! Occasionally when a concerned mother or father finds out that their children have borrowed a ring or two, they put the rings into an envelope (with no return address) and mail them back to the park.

Sorry, but I'm keeping my ring .... One last parting shot of the interior as we pull ourselves away ...

Carrousel. It's French you know! The English spelling leaves out one of the R's.

We walked around the park abit. Passed a wedding party celebration. The DJ was playing Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling."
'that tonight's gonna be a good night....
It was. We finished with dinner at Olive Garden. Eggplant parmesan with spaghetti. Salad. Red wine. Rod raised his glass to mine. "Salut," he said. "Salut."