Wild Rose Prairie

I had a lot of fun with the family yesterday and it was packed full of history at that. The day started out with a trip to the Car d'Lane show, which is the annual car show in downtown Coeur d'Alene, ID near where we live. You can see my boys admiring the cars in the photos. If they were facing the camera they'd probably be drooling like their father.

So we spent a while there looking at two streets full of cars. We missed the Friday Night Cruise. We've gone to that before, but I was wiped out Friday night.

Then we had a couple errands to run. One took us to North Spokane, WA near Mead to get an electric used lawn mower we finally found on Craigslist. We just finished our front lawn and it is now a raised lawn with rock all the way around. Gas lawnmowers are too heavy to lift up there, so we had been looking for an electric. It's for just a small patch of lawn.
So we were on our way. I called and got directions, and don't laugh....I missed one of the turns he told me to take. So we ended up going a little too far down Hwy 395 trying to find this street that didn't exist on 395. Where we turned around we saw a sign for a Farm Museum. So we agreed that after we meet the guy holding this lawn mower for us we'd come back. We finally found the place, almost by accident, bought the lawn mower and headed back to the museum. It was a five mile drive off of 395 through beautiful winding hills that opened into stretches of farm land and then back to hills....until we got there. About a mile in we saw an old school house being restored. I love to see that when someone take the time, care, and money to restore and protect our history. On the right just before the museum was a cemetery (made mental note to return after we were done). We got to the museum and had a wonderful time. This was the North Spokane Farm Museum Wild Rose Prairie in Deer Park, WA. Most museum you go in and walk through the displays and read for yourself, but this was different. The lady who walked us through talked to us and told us the history behind so many of the pieces. Some of it was from her family, some from her husbands and others pieces donated by other local family. But they have done a fabulous job of preserving the history of everything there. Even my children had their own tour guide, a young boy....I believe was the ladies grandson. He was I sure younger than my oldest, but he walked them through and showed them the working displays they could play with and they had a blast. My husband and I were in awe of the care that has gone into creating this museum. If you are ever in Eastern Washington you've got to make a trip to visit this museum. It's well worth it!

On my way out I asked my husband to be a dear and stop by the cemetery. He did.It was the Wild Rose Cemetery established 1885, though the gal at the museum did say that they believe people were buried there before it was actually established and that the headstones are gone on some of the old ones. The cemetery is still used though they are nearly out of space. We all got out and visited. It was a great lesson time for the kids. I took a moment to explain respect in a cemetery to them. They did really good really. My daughter stayed with me, and on occasion I had to remind her to look down that she was too close to a headstone and over the grave. She'd give her usual respond of "Oppie" and quickly move. The boys did really good. They split up and helped me look for old headstones or military stones. My husband also walked through and admired a few until his allergies got the best of him and he went back to the car. I didn't care if my allergies were getting to me. I managed to get photos of plenty of headstones, so I now have plenty of material for future Tombstone Tuesday posts. Now I am going to visit Find-A-Grave and see if this cemetery is even on there. If not then I'll post it.

Then we grabbed a bit to eat and came home. I walked into the house to find that even the dogs behaved themselves. There wasn't a problem at all. So it was a really good day!

Now I've told the kids that since I'm off on Fridays for I don't know how long (work is just really slow and looking worse) I'm going to take them to museum to give us something to do. The next two we will visit is the Coeur d'Alene museum and Harrison Museum. I'll report on these later.