Spokane, Washington

I walked from the cruise ship dock to the Seattle bus station, and quickly realized this next journey was going to be very, very different from the cruise. From a floating resort to…

My first stop was Spokane, WA, a five hour bus ride. I’ll do a post later about bus-riding, but this one was uneventful. The Washington landscape changes drastically from East to West, so it was very cool to gradually see this happen through the bus window.

Spokane is a classic river & railroad town in that it has developed linearly along both. The main downtown strip is nice enough, mainly bank & hotels made of concrete & brick. But wander a block or two off it and things get grim — you don’t see many folks, and those that you do see are clearly down on their luck. They’re so out of it, however, that I was never once approached or harassed.

It feels like a standard midwest town whose glory has faded, but is putting up the good fight to modernize and stay relevant: Shops; restaurants; festivals; coffee places; garbage goats, bike paths, breweries, oh so many breweries.

Enough negative: The river itself is stunning, perhaps the most beautiful I’ve ever seen flow through a US city. There are waterfalls & bridges galore, and fantastic paths & parks all along it.

There’s not much else to do in Spokane, so I spent most of my touristy time just walking along the river and taking a bazillion pictures & videos.

I was fine with it, though, as I needed some recovery time from cruise buffet + drink-package overindulgence, as well as from the mostly-mild COVID that many of us got.

When I wasn’t on the river, I was working out of the spectacular Spokane Central Library.

It’s probably the nicest US library I’ve ever been in, and that view I had while working was world class.

So, no real reason to add Spokane as a destination, but if you ever find yourself there anyway, it’s a fine place to spend a day.

It was a pretty uneventful stop for me, other than having another travel brain fart. It’s still too fresh to reveal, though, and resolved itself uneventfully, so perhaps it will just remain my private shame.

They had a nice little bus station (on the outside…) to take me to my next stop.

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