Blog

Williams Lake kept me sane the summer of 2013, the year my husband and I moved from Puerto Rico to the Inland Northwest. When I make that comment to people in Spokane, they immediately think of Spokane County’s Williams Lake. Located…Continue reading→

The personal connection: The Spokane/Coeur d’Alene metropolitan area may be the largest in the Inland Northwest, but it is surrounded by dozens of small cities and towns, each with its own particular history and appeal. The one I know best is…Continue reading→

As my tagline states, this blog is about writing and the places that inspire. I’ve been focusing on places in the Inland Northwest: it’s now time to connect them with the writing part of the blog. Back to the past: To…Continue reading→

A day on the bluff: Tourism brochures tout Spokane both as a city ‘near nature, near perfect’ and one blessed with ‘four distinct seasons.’ Basically, all that is true [though I personally think winter here is top-heavy, and summer could go…Continue reading→

The wages of greed: During Coeur d’Alene’s wild-west years in the late 1800s, Tony Tubbs, a German immigrant, had his own get-rich-quick scheme. He bought a 138-acre hill alongside Lake Coeur d’Alene for a modest price and attempted to sell lots,…Continue reading→

What’s in a name: Coeur d’Alene is a small city in northern Idaho with an exotic name. This lilting French phrase refers not only to the city but also to a lake, a river, and a tribe of Native Americans in…Continue reading→

Every Spokane tourism brochure worth its salt includes   Manito Park as a must-see destination. When I first read about the park, I – fresh off the plane from San Juan, Puerto Rico – thought, ‘how nice, the Park of the Little Hand,’…Continue reading→

Spokane is the largest city and the hub of the Inland Northwest. In spite of its spelling, the city is pronounced as if the final ‘e’ didn’t exist – Spo-can, not Spo-cane. The word means ‘children of the sun’ in the…Continue reading→

My new posts focus on the Inland Northwest U.S. But what in fact is this?  Also, why do we sometimes hear it called the Inland Empire? And how does it relate to the region known as the Pacific Northwest? When I…Continue reading→

The minute I stepped out of the airport into a chilly April day in Spokane, the reality of my month in Valdivia began to slip away. Valdivia had converted to a far-off place, in the same way Spokane had while I…Continue reading→