Back in the late 1970’s, an acquaintance of mine raved on and on about the beauty that is CDA. And ever since, I’ve had it on my mind to one day visit said exotically beautiful locale. And so it was on this 7th day of June that we achieved a destination that had been on my mind for some 35-40 years. I’m surprised there was enough room for it in there, what with all the baseball and television clutter in there.
CDA, WE ARE HERE!
We landed at Blackwell Island RV Resort and scored a campsite right on the river. You can’t believe how rare that is for us RV‘ers; usually, our campgrounds face prisons, toxic waste sites, or Denny’s restaurants, but never such a setting as this.Idaho now becomes the 33rd state in which AB1 has weighed anchor, so to speak. CDA was first explored in 1805, but it got its big-time attention when gold was discovered here in 1883. I’ve got to think that nowadays, tourism carries the day in this most-beautiful of lakeside cities.
Being the theatre mavens that we are, we hurried our drive that day in order to be all set up in time for the television broadcast of “The American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards” saluting excellence on Broadway. I suppose that, once again, many of you either attended or hosted Tony award parties and had your prediction sheets all filled out. Hope you had success with that.
Two more Tony references from that night’s show and then we’ll move on: 1) Tommy Tune received a Tony “Lifetime Achievement Award.” You may remember the picture of legendary hoofer Tommy with Diedre last year on-stage in Houston (4/17/14 blog). At the time, the quote was, “This has got to be the thrill of a lifetime for me!” That was so nice of Tommy to say. And 2) the marvelous 82-year old Chita Rivera, Diedre’s hero since she (DK) was a little girl, not only was again nominated for a Tony, but she also performed at the ceremony as well. What a star!Here are some tips for you novice or future “RV’ers” out there that I, a wizened RV-veteran of 2.5 years, have picked up from my time on the road: 1) On Mondays, do NOT use the camp laundry, especially in the A.M. Everybody tries to get their duds clean for the week, so the camp laundry room is a madhouse; then the place sits empty for the next six days. I learned the hard way here on CDA-Monday; and 2) don’t plan to get to bed early on Friday nights; all the young people (you know, the 40-50 year-olds), after a hard week at work, have tossed their camping gear along with a lot of beer into their jeeps and Range Rovers and will inevitably set up their tents right next to you where they’ll then proceed to party late into the evening blowing off steam and exercising their vocal cords, the camp quiet hours (10 P.M. to 7 A.M.) be damned. So make sure to put those in your “Alexx’s Handy RV Tips” notebook.
You’re welcome.
We checked out the CDA downtown area on Tuesday, June 9, and it was absolutely charming. It had a real north woods feel, but with enough breweries to keep DK happy. We walked the town’s famous “floating boardwalk” at the CDA Resort’s marina. At 12’ wide and 3,300 feet long, it’s the world’s longest wet walkway. And after walking it, a little more than 1/6th of our daily 3-mile walk had been accomplished.
We then did a great scenic hike (of course, where in CDA is not scenic?), all mountains and hills and forests, right in the downtown area. “Tubbs Hill,” named after an 1882 German immigrant to CDA, is on the shores of Lake CDA. The city founding fathers wisely made it into a 120-acre preserve for future RV’ers to enjoy. A two-mile loop trail takes you completely around the belt of the hill. Since Tubbs is surrounded by Lake CDA on 3 sides and is thickly forested, you’re never at a loss for even more amazing scenery. Diedre was even able to do some “Tubbs Hill Yoga” on our hike, never being one to pass up world-class-scenic yoga locations.We then continued our hike, more urbanely now, by checking out the downtown environs. CDA’s town mascot must be the moose since they had all kinds of salutes to Bullwinkle’s relatives all over town, e.g. statues, paintings, moose-chip carvings .
(*=To clarify, that would be “THIS WEEK’s best fish tacos ever.”)
Today was a day of “firsts” for us. The first first was DK, now craftily using her newly won “Silver Sneakers Card” courtesy of Medicare, enjoying her first work-out visit to the nationally known lady-sweatshop, Curves. She will be using these facilities FOR FREE all over the country for the next 25 years or so.And our second first (2nd 1st? … um, yeah, that’s right) was due to a gift from our good Arizona friend, The English Tea Room ’s Jo Gemmill. Totally aghast when she had heard that we had never seen the drug-infused, weekly murder-fest comedy called “Breaking Bad,” television show, Jo gave us the entire six-year run of shows in a DVD set. So that evening, we watched the first of what would be 75-80 “Breaking Bad” episodes. Skeptical at first, I eventually grew to like it. But not so my blushing bride.
She was hooked!
Thus begins our late-night run of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.The TV show will be fun, too.
BA-DUM-BUMP!
The next day, we thought we’d view the CDA scenery from the other side, so we were off on a 90-minute cruise on Lake CDA. “National Geographic” has called it one of the five most beautiful lakes in the world, right up there, I suppose, with Loch Ness, Lake Woebegone, Lake Bell, and Veronica Lake. It was a lovely day on the water, sunny and cloudless, and not too crowded on the boat. 
We cruised around Tubb’s Hill as well as several islands, and we even got to see the world’s only “floating green” from the lake. More on that in Friday’s blog entry.
Completing our lazy day, we had cocktails at the Whispers Bar at the CDA Resort, THE resort in town, then wandered down to the Main Street weekly Farmers’ Market where Diedre had her way with basil, goat cheese, and huckleberries.
Shortly, we moved on.
We then headed back into Washington to Spokane and the basketball-centric Gonzaga University founded in 1883. After a nice walk through the charmingly small campus, we spent quite a bit of time there at “The Bing Crosby House.” What fun!
Der Bingle’s boyhood home is right on campus. The “Bing Crosby Collection House” was built by his father and uncles in 1913. Now the main level is a Bing museum and the upper level is the Gonzaga Alumni Center.We saw and learned a lot of interesting things about Bing:
-his given name was “Harry Lillis Crosby,” but he got his nickname “Bing” (shortened from “Bingo”) at age 7 from a neighborhood chum after a character in a comic strip;
-Bing played semi-professional baseball with the Spokane Ideal Laundry team;
-he graduated from Gonzaga High School in 1920;
-in 1940, he appeared in the first of seven “Road” moving-pictures with Bob Hope;
-Bing appeared in 104 films and won an Academy Award in 1944 for his performance in the movie “Going My
Way” (that’s Diedre with Bing’s Oscar);
-as a singer, he had 23 gold and platinum records and made the highest number of studio recordings;
-he recorded the most popular record ever (“White Christmas” has sold 100-million copies and counting); it’s the only single to make the American pop charts 20 times;
-Bing recorded over 2,000 songs, scored 368 charted records compared to Elvis’s 149 and the Beatles 68, had the most number one hits with 38 (Beatles 24, Elvis 18), and was nominated for 3 Academy Awards.
Bing died of a heart attack in 1977 doing what he loved: golfing in Spain. He was dedicated to the Bulldogs of Gonzaga University. There’s a statue of him on campus.
We didn’t know much about the city of Spokane, but once again proving our old RV adage, “You can always find something interesting about any town you’re in … even Lusk, Wyoming (population 1,617).” And the downtown of Spokane was very interesting. I mean, how often do you get waterfalls and rapids rushing through the heart of a city? Well, Spokane’s “Riverfront Park” had all that and more. We walked alongside Spokane Falls as the water thundered through the downtown area. The park was great. In addition to its water features, there was a clock tower, an ice skating rink, an antique carousel, and a summer carnival site. Diedre was able to get her exercise in that day by joining this rather stiff running group. Having time for just the afternoon there, we both decided Spokane is a place we need to come back to and spend more time.
On Friday, our last day in CDA, we decided to do our 3-miles on the North Idaho Centennial Trail, a paved hiking path that goes west for 24 miles and then connects with Spokane’s Centennial Trail. The whole thing is 60 miles long. It’s built along the Spokane River, so the scenery is just … well, GET-OUT! The trail also had a French par course, so in addition to walking, Diedre was able to get in her “yoga-hanging-and-standing-on-
Now we come to the infamous golf hole number 14 on the Coeur d’ Alene Resort Golf Course as mentioned previously.“Whaaa?” you might ask.
Well, old number 14 has the world’s only FLOATING green!
Yes, you hit your drive out into the lake hoping the wind helps you land on the green, then you hop in a pontoon boat and cruise the 174 yards out to do your putting. The resort gives you three golf balls, a pack of tees, a logoed ball marker, and a package of Dramamine. We hung out in the clubhouse and then had lunch in the grill that overlooks number 14. Scenic much?!
When we got back to AB1 that night, we found a text from Nancy, our sturdy house-checker, which stated that our Scottsdale refrigerator had somehow clanked off this month and that we now had the world’s largest penicillin experiment. Yes, a fine crop of mold is growing where I used to keep my frozen Twinkies.
I’m so proud!
Now that we’ve hit all the MLB ballparks, we’ve decided our next quest is, through the inspiration of our good pal R.J., to make it to all the national parks. With that in mind, get set to welcome us tomorrow to GLACIER NATIONAL PARK and the 11th annual Diederich family reunion!
Stay tuned.
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