Coeur d' Alene, Idaho (Monday, August 20th, 2019)

We finally get to explore Coeur d' Alene!  This is an incredibly beautiful city, but we've been so busy exploring around it that we haven't had a chance to see what it has to offer.  So today we headed to the downtown, lakeside area.

There is a long, circular floating dock that runs from downtown to Tubbs Hill.  Supposedly, it is the longest floating dock in the U.S.A.

While we were out on the dock, we watched a water plane take off.

There are some beautiful boats on Lake Coeur d' Alene.

All of the docks are covered.

Tubbs Hill is on the right side of this picture.  It is literally right next to downtown.  In the afternoon, we are going to park in the city hall parking lot and take a three mile hike around this hill.

After leaving the boardwalk, we walked over to the beach and park.  You can see the boardwalk and marina in the background.

A fun little stream for the kids to play in.

There is a bike path that runs all around Lake Coeur d' Alene, and from what I understand goes all the way to Spokane, WA.

We had some lunch, and parked in the city hall building.  Now we are walking by down town to get to our Tubbs Hill hike.  Look at this beautiful children's park!

We are going to do the lower loop hike around the base of Tubbs Hill.

This park gets a lot of use.  Every alcove has people swimming in it.  The beach is on one side of us, and a forest on the other.

About half way around the hill, it was starting to get hot, so we decided to find our own little alcove to swim in.  The water was so refreshing!

Look how crystal clear the water is!  It's incredible.  We didn't realize we should bring along swimwear, so it was a come as you are swim day.

Once we were nice and cool, we hit the trail again.

The private Coeur d' Alene golf course actually has a island green.

As we were looking at the floating green and docks, I heard a noise behind me.  So I turned around and came nose to nose with this little girl.  We scared each other, and she took off!

But once she was far enough away, she was curious enough to turn back around to see what I was.

We got to cross this little suspension bridge.

As we neared the end of our hike, we could once again see downtown starting to reappear.

We saw this osprey nest.  There were four babies that were just learning to fly and would return to the nest to rest, and then they would take flight again.

These little moose statues are all over town.  The mouse hides from the moose in different places.

They have nesting poles for the osprey in the downtown park.  I think they even have cameras on them.  What a great idea for an endangered bird species!

What an amazing day exploring Coeur d' Alene!  I wish we had more time here, but we must continue on with our adventure!