Fish Lake and Cheney

So we went for 7 mile bike ride from fish lake to the quaint township of Cheney. Cheney is a small town with a massive university, the Eastern Washington University. So it was fun to ride threw.

Apparently Phils great (or perhaps great great) grand parents are from cheney, but the details have been difficult to confirm.

It was a lovely stretch of the legs, with many great views and heaps of smiles!

Dinner at Grandmas

We head over to Grandmas for a delightful dinner every thursday night. Here are some pics, we will try to get some with grandma and cherly and aileen who often join us.

I just had to post the pavalova that Ian made... mmm... tasty

Trail of the Coeur D'Alenes

recently we invested in a new mode of transport - bicycles! we have matching red road bikes. we decided to try them out on the trail of the coeur d'alenes with cheryl, heidi and ian one saturday afternoon. the trail is an old railway track that runs along the south of lake coeur d'alene. we hit the trail around 4:00pm and rode for 7 miles to a small town called harrison which has amazing icecreams for a little price. on the way bike we had one busted tire which meant ian and fi walked a long way back - but arrived in time for a yummy bbq dinner prepared by the others!

Spokane SHOCKKKK!

We went to see the Spokane Shock play with Heidi and John - who both grew up in other countries too. Trying to understand what the rules were was interesting in the midst of all our ignorance! The Shock is an indoor 'football' team that is amazingly successful (they won the national playoffs!). Though keep in mind that indoor football is a simpler, shorter game.

We had a ball trying to get into the game. We were amazed how little support the other team recieved, even from the commentators.

It was really loud. When Arizona, the other team was on 'offense' the crowd goes wild to distract them, and for each 'down' the volume gets cranked to another level.

Enjoy the pics!

Ritzville - the place to be

Ritzville is a real place. It has a real 'Main St' and a real statue of Phil Ritz the founder.


A real cinema, that plays the same movie three nights in a row.

It has a real grocery store - it is actually pretty good.

It even has a quilting and liquor store all in one!



All in all it is a beautiful place with really friendly people. It was a most quaint and enjoyable town.

Creationfest 2010

After Mt Rainer, we hit Creationfest 2010... It was a Christian music festival totally reminded us of good ol' Sonfest in Boonah, Qld (all those years ago).

It was a lot of fun just to hang out. We got to see Superchick and Skillet to their thing. Skillet was pretty cool with fire, fireworks, and a mad cellist and violinist.

Road Trip!

Sorry everyone, our blogging is totally out of order at the moment. These pics are on road trip to the west coast. Pretty fun!

Make way for ducks

Growing up one of my favourite books was called "Make way for ducks" which is the tale of a mother duck leading her ducklings across Boston. In downtown Spokane I was able to see a true life version of this tale! These ducks lay their eggs a few blocks away from the river. Once the eggs are hatched it is quite the event in navigating their way through the city traffic to the water. I was quite lucky to find this group of people protecting these ducklings as they paraded down to the water. The yellow sign was designed to stop traffic to make way for these ducks.

The next day I saw another mother leading her ducklings down the road. This time there was no group of people around to protect her and the new borns. Unfortunately I was on my way to an interview and unable to stop to have my own story about making way for ducks!

Manito Park Roses

We took Grandma and Cheryl to see the beautiful roses at Manito Park in Spokane.

It is a 90 hectare park, which is predominately maintained by volunteers.

They were beautiful!!!

Mt Rainier

We ventured to Mt Rainier, WA and walked up to the Glacier basin. It was a steady uphill walk for 3.5 miles, and then downhill all the way home :)

It was a beautiful summer's day, but as you can see in the following photo this didnt deter the snowboarders. (this gent was climbing to 11,000 feet {from around 4,200 feet} to then snowboard down)


Look further on to see how exciting it became :)