Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Poking around Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

We had a good time wandering around Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. 

With 44,000 people, Coeur d'Alene has the second largest metropolitan area population in Idaho. Named by French trappers for a tribe of Native Americans, Coeur d'Alene literally means "heart of the awl" which, per Wikipedia, might mean shrewd and could reflect the trappers' perceptions that the Native Americans were tough business people. It has a busy, touristy downtown with lots of shops and restaurants, shade-tree-filled neighborhoods, and lots of walking/hiking/biking paths. Plus a cemetery with trees the size of ones we saw in Glacier National Park.

Very pretty town, but most of my photos were taken at a brew pub. Figures. Like I said, we had a good time.
The motor home park where we stayed in Coeur d'Alene --Blackwell Island RV Park -- had pretty water lilies so I again experimented with the water color setting on my camera.
The Coeur d'Alene Resort takes up a hunk of downtown.  It has a marina, convention facilities, spa, floating boardwalk and a golf course with a "floating green" accessed via shuttle boat. Pretty fancy.
Koi in the Coeur d'Alene Resort's 32-foot long fish tank.  Compare the size of the fish to the size of the people on the other side of the tank.  Or maybe those people were inside the tank, too.  I can't remember. But the fish were at least 18 inches long.
This beer looks bigger than my head, and my head is huge.  Actually, its a ten-ounce pour of Anderson Valley Imperial Stout that I got at Crafted Tap House and Kitchen in downtown Coeur d'Alene.  Jim had Maiden the Shade IPA.
Crafted Tap House and Kitchen had maybe 50 beers on tap.  An iPad-type tablet with details of all the offerings was at each table.
Whoops, I cut off Jim's head. But here's the very prettily presented food we had at Crafted:  Garbanzo bean patties (foreground) for Bev and shrimp patties for Jim. 

4 comments:

  1. We roared through Coeur d'Alene on I90 yesterday as we make our way east for babysitting duty in Columbus at the end of the month. Beautiful area -- we could see why you would want to kayak there.

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  2. Babysitting Victor sounds good, too! Say hi to Ohio for us.

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  3. We'll be in Coeur d"Alene tomorrow and will definitely try the Crafted Tap House. Thanks!
    Gayle

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