Idaho Vacation Part One - Silverwood

For our summer vacation this year we returned to Northern Idaho -- Sandpoint & Lake Pend'Oreille (pronounced Pond-er-ay in "American"). We returned to Bayview where we stayed for our summer vacation seven years ago. The vacation rental by owner (VRBO) condo is still there and managed by the same guy. This is our review:

We just stayed there for 4 days and had a wonderful time. The sun coming up across over the hills across the bay bouncing off the rippling water and dancing on the ceiling of the condo over your morning coffee is really hard to beat. We used the condo as our HQ for a day at Silverwood Theme Park (it's a 12 minute drive), a day on Sandpoint beaches & up Schweitzer mountain, and a day entirely in Bayview including getting out on the water in a rented boat. The condo is right on the shallow waterfront so you can just walk down and goof around lazily in inflatables and then walk to the floating restaurant for dinner.

But before getting to Idaho we stopped in Spokane. After breakfast the in an old rail car (Frank's Diner) where we also ate seven years ago we headed north. 

Our vacation didn't get off to the most auspicious start. The first activity planned was to visit Gardner Cave in Crawford State Park which is two hours north of Spokane. We left one day early in order to go there. We drove up to Metaline Falls which is very close to the Canadian border. The state park that the cave is located in was CLOSED when we got there. Closed on a Tuesday in August? Very strange indeed.

My family was very chill about it. I was the most upset. My husband enjoys being in the "middle of nowhere". We explored Metaline Falls and had lunch there. We found out that a movie was filmed here - the Postman starring Kevin Costner.

The "detour" also let us approach Sandpoint from a different direction than we had before, from the West instead of the South, which helped a little. This is Sandpoint beach at sunset.

Wednesday we spent the entire day (8 hours) at Silverwood Theme Park. A lot of people in Western Washington don't even know about Silverwood. We only really found out about it by accident years ago when we were driving from Seattle to Calgary. We've been once before and learned a few lessons. Our main target was actually the water park, known as Boulder Beach.

We arrived at the park at 10:30 am which is the best time to arrive. Boulder Beach (the water park) doesn't open until 11 so you spend some time waiting in line. Once it opens you should claim some lounge chairs with your towels for later.

We picked our rides pretty carefully the night before so we could get the most out of the day. We focused on the "medium intensity" water slides which we could do as a family (Avalanche Mountain & Richochet Rapids) and the low intensity longer-lasting attractions, like the wave pools and lazy river. A was the only one to take on the Riptide Racer (solo mats you lie face down on and go up to 30MPH on.

The family favourite was Avalanche Mountain. It is for 4 to 6 people, in a large tube and goes down a slide. We also tried Richochet Rapids but C and I didn't like that one. I ended up going backwards and that was no fun. There is a dark section and you don't know when a drop will come.

The Lazy River is just a fun way to float or swim along in a big 'circle' bumping inner tubes with a hundred perfect strangers. We did that multiple times.

There are two large wave pools and they actually are a lot of fun. The water is super-warm and the waves come thick and fast without too long of a break in between. You can easily pick your intensity level by where you choose to stand.

Later in the day we dried off and did a few rides in the main park, though mostly the ones with a water theme. We did the "Roaring Creek" Log Flume, which is mostly a lead-up to a 20 ft "freefall" slide & splash, and finally the "Bumper Boats", which are more like spray boats. You can spray other boats and spray people on shore. Watchers from the shore can also spray those in the boats. Jonathan joined in and got soaked by S who was on the shore.

That's J in the top right and C at bottom right.

We ate at the sit down restaurant at the park - Lindy's. We left the park about 7:30 pm. We'd planned to go to a magic show but it was sold out by the time we checked. We ended up spending 8 hours at the park, definitely getting our money's worth.

Our feet were pretty tired. My phone has an app that tells you how many steps you did. I didn't have the phone with me for the whole day but even with that caveat it said that I did over 9000 steps.


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