Riverside State Park

I am happy to report, that the people of the Pacific Northwest are an active and outdoorsy bunch, our kind of people. The area has numerous parks and conservation areas that are within driving distance of our apartment. The main one I want to focus on, is Riverside State park.

We went to this stunning park, for the first time, after Chrysa’s first week of work. Chrysa spotted this park online and really wanted to check out the trails. She really wants to continue mastering trail running and she correctly figured that this park would do the trick. Luckily for us that it was also free admission the day we went.

The park itself is adjacent to the city of Spokane, in the northwestern corner of town. Riverside has both marked rough trails, and the paved Centennial Trail that runs all the way to Idaho. There are also Jeep trails if that’s your thing. It’s not hard to get to the park once you figure out your route. FYI, if you ever visit Spokane, take the Argonne route, Google Maps takes you straight through the heart of the city. The Argonne way is much easier and more scenic.

We decided to park at the most northern entrance, near the dam. We were hoping for a visitor center to get a trail map, but we didn’t run across one. We were going to have wing it. We did a short loop trail near our parking spot as a warm up, before embarking on the main part of our adventure, trail 25. This trail is the main rough trail and seems to stretch most of the distance of the park. Although Chrysa wanted to run, it wasn’t really in the cards. This section of the trail was in particularly hilly terrain and the path went straight up. Chrysa was actually really happy with this development, in fact, she kept picking the hardest route for extra difficulty. We were both feeling really gung ho, hoping that the tough trail would pay off with great views, and it did!

After hiking up steep hills, along narrow paths, and through treacherous loose rocks, we did get a little room to run. We had parked the Jeep near a trail head for the Centennial Trail, so we decided to walk it a little as a cool down. After our cool down we knew that we would have to come back often. The park is just too amazing. We decided to find the wayward visitor center to get a map and pay for our discovery pass to get back in. We did end up finding the visitor center, it’s near the gun range! Unfortunately we were going to have to come back to get the pass and map. The credit card machine was down.

We got the chance a couple weeks later. We had done a 5 mile training run, near our house in Spokane Valley, but we still had more in the tank. Full of energy, on a glorious day, we headed back over to Riverside to pick up where we left off. The second trip didn’t disappoint either. This time we did get some running in on trail 25. We hiked/ran along the river while taking in the gorgeous vistas. We even got to see some white water rafters enjoying themselves on a beautiful day.

Now that we have our yearly pass we are going visit this park all the time. Hopefully Riverside ends up like Custer State Park, a place we never get bored of. In fact, we will be back sooner than we thought, Chrysa has signed up for a race at Riverside this coming Sunday!

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