Day 6 - Spokane Valley

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Submitted by brad on
He Said: Brief recap: I told Ryan, as we headed to the children's museum, that he'd say "Whaahh?!?! Who made all this fun?!?" when he saw it. He thought that was hilarious and tried several times to say "I'm going to say ....", mangling it each time. Then I told him a bedtime story about a dinosaur at the campground that he found hilarious. That's it for anecdotes. Nothing to see here, people. Keep moving. We went to the Mobius Kids museum in Spokane. Sounded awesome on the website. Robots, virtual instruments you strum by waving your hands, all kinds of things. When we reach downtown I saw the building, and when we parked across the street and saw an entrance right there in the basement, I was getting psyched. This place was gonna be huge. Underground tunnels joining two buildings? Except it wasn't. It was just one middlin' sized room, with NO robots, and a fancy new building that opens up across the street in about 10 days. Guess they jumped the gun a bit on the site. Still, like every children's museum we've been to, the kids had a blast and we had to drag them away. I learned my van was taller than 5'. I learned it on the way into the 6'6" parking lot with my 18" travel bag strapped to the roof of my van. That was a bit of a jolt. Ripped that sucker right off. Well, not right off. Thankfully the back straps held until we parked. Had to go buy a new one tonight; there's no way all that is fitting in the car. The upside is, the new one's bigger. The downside is, I think the straps are much, much cheaper. Anyway. Again, not much happened. Not much funny to write. Not much planned for tomorrow. It's turning out to be a very blaise trip to write about. But the kids are having fun. Maybe I can just start driving tomorrow and see how close I get to Nevada before Shannon notices I didn't turn West. I did manage to source some goodies for the BBQ. Nabbed some Famous Dave's sauce, which makes me actually interested in doing ribs again. Found Coke Cherry Zero, Coke Vanilla Zero (and Plain), Mr. Pibb, etc. Hires is becoming a bit of a lifequest. There are blogs about it's dissolution frokm the american landscape. People who hunt it. Apparently there's a Winco in Kent Washington that has it regularly, so if I go that way I'll try to snag some. Keep reading, I'll try to put some vim in my vigor tomorrow. After a 9 hour drive to somewhere still unknown. Sigh. She Said: Brad asked Gillian if she would rather go camping tomorrow or go see the ocean. She said "I don't want to go to the ocean tomorrow because I'm not ready to eat seafood yet." Downtown Spokane also has a nice city centre park, by the river. There's a gondolla, a train, a carousel, and a few other rides. We did the gondolla over the waterfall. Not too hot today. Was very nice to walk around and not feel like your skin is about to burst in flames. The girls and I did the pool this afternoon while Ryan napped and Brad researched where to get replacement car-top bags. There was some other kids there and then a group of "old people" took over the hot tub. The oldest was probably 65. I caught enough of their conversation to learn that one of them was a recently retired judge and the only woman there has a son who is a police officer. We saw them again in the courtyard outside our room at dinner time. They were playing hearts and eating junk food that they had bought at Costco. The judge had a bucket of twizzlers and the cop's mom had beef jerky. If they are still out there now (10:00) I might go try and join them. Ryan has a cold that seemed much worse after his nap today. His energy level is normal, so that's a good sign. I picked up some children's Tylenol and a thermometer at Walmart just in case. We let the kids do the claw machine at the Walmart entrance and ended up getting 12 silly little stuffies for $4. I'm so excited.