It’s tough sometimes to find things that you can do with the whole family that don’t require your life-saving. I have learned to be very frugal when visiting a new city, I like to google certain phrases to see what we can do as a family.  The best phrases are “things to do with kids in the city, state” or “free things kids city, state” and most of the time I get loads of resources.  Sometimes I let the girls google these key phrases so they can pick out what they want to do while visiting a certain city.

This time we happen to be in Spokane Washington during Bloomsday.  Over 50,000 runners head down to Riverside Park and run, jog, and walk 12 kilometers.  We did not want to face over 3 million specters so we went down for the kid’s event the day before.  Kids from all the local schools are able to run (a much smaller course) 1 mile in the park.  Everyone receives a blue ribbon, t-shirt, and bread from Franz Bakery. They had vendors with kettle popcorn, snow cones, lemonade, and souvenir stands.

We visited the park several times because it was free and there were several things to do. We learned about the 1974 World’s Fair, the old train station, and Washington Water Power Company. We learned about the great clock tower that was the center of controversy when the old train station was torn down and became the center of the 74′ World’s Fair.  River Park is surrounded by many falls that produce hydroelectricity for Spokane.  The playground highlights a huge red wagon and has a mechanic goat that eats trash.  You also can find the Looff Carrousel, which was built in 1909, it has 54 horses, with split personalities, on the outside (the side you see visually ) the horse is painted with extreme detail making it look like the fanciest horse on the ride, on the inside of the horse is just a plain painted horse, no flash or thrill.