Walking, exploring, and discovering the many beauties in Cheney and Spokane, Washington.

We did a lot of walking, exploring, and discovering while visiting Hailey, Joseph, Clark, and Avonlea in Cheney and Spokane, Washington.

Avonlea and Clark reading with the "kids"!

 The first night, we took a very long walk through Eastern Washington University where Hailey and Joseph work.  What a beautiful campus albeit a bit sparse on people because of the COVID-19 challenge. Of course, that just meant we had the campus to ourselves.

The next morning, we head to the Turnbull Wildlife Refuge, but there was a train parked on the tracks between us and the refuge. We waited more than a few minutes and decided that the train was not going to move any time soon, so we trundled over to Spokane to the Moore-Turner Heritage Center, and that was closed, too. We did do a bit of walking along a few paths outside of the Center.

Clark and Grandma Hammon

Well, since Spokane has lots of things to do, we headed over to the John A.Finch Arboretum, "a botanical collection of trees and woody plants that have been labeled for field study." What a treat that was!

It is an arboretum, 65 acres of flora and fauna of all kinds. We even saw a couple of turkeys with a baby turkey.

Oh, and did I say lots of rocks?

One of the most beautiful flowers was Avonlea!

The next morning, we finally were able to cross the tracks and drive to the Turnbull Wildlife Refuge. What a fun and intriguing place! We walked about. 1.5 miles down and around this particular lake and saw lots of birds and flora and fauna.

Two swans from a far....

We saw a big while pelican that was lounging around the lake. I whistled, hoping he would jump and fly so I could get a better view—to no avail. He knew there was no reason to be worried about any of this.

The early morning reflections of trees, water, and a rising sun made for some phenomenal views.

Early morning reflections....

The wild flowers were pretty and plentiful.

Plus, we saw three red tail hawks. It was challenging to get a close-up view of them, but one stayed still for a moment.

In the afternoon after lunch, we motored over to Manito Park in Spokane, a very pristine and well-manicured place with lots of flowers, more flowers than I have seen for a long time.

We walked through the English gardens

the rose garden, which was finishing its blooming season. If they would dead head them, they would come back, right?

the regular gardens

 

Avonlea loves the water....

Avonlea and Clark playing with ladybugs....a plethora!

We tried the Japanese gardens, but they were closed because of the coronavirus, too close of quarters. But I did peek through and over the fence and took a couple of pictures.

What a joy we had doing all of this. I will post all of the flowers on Facebook so you can see them all—or at least the ones I will post.

Once we were dazzled by all of the flowers, we drove through this residential area until we ended up at The Scoop, a mom and pop shop that sells a variety of ice cream.

Ultimately, when the day ended, I had over 12,000+ steps. Whew, what a day!