Sandpoint, June 23, 2012

We arrived in Sandpoint, where the clouds threatened to rain, but did not.

Our hotel is right by a beach area, so we decided to check out the pathway and then went downtown to check out the touristy stores.

This is the photo for the day, showing Lake Pend Oreille. What is interesting about this marina is that there no large boats, such as one might see, say, in Victoria, BC.

Then at night, as the sun was setting behind us, we were able to observe some pink clouds to the east. These shots were taken from our balcony.

Sandpoint, June 24, 2012

Another pretty evening shot from our balcony.

Real Estate

We usually check out the local realtors’ window displays whenever we visit somewhere. In Sandpoint, we saw some pretty nice places with some pretty reasonable prices. Some were lots which were advertised as requiring alternative energy – translated: no electricity will be delivered to your place. We saw one nice place for about $1.5 million – it was a huge house on what looked like a huge acreage, sporting 9 bedrooms and 6 kitchens – apparently ideal for creating a B&B.

This was the other end of the spectrum:

Trains

One of the partners of my former employer, Canadian Pacific Railway, is the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway. BNSF has a huge network of track. In particular, it has a major east-west line running reasonably close to the 49th parallel.

Why do I know this?

Because that line runs through Sandpoint. And at least every hour or so, a BNSF train passes within 100 m of our hotel. And it’s usually a looooong train. We have seen – and heard – a lot of automobile and grain cars passing by.

Sandpoint, June 25, 2012

This morning, the weather didn’t look too amenable for hiking – overcast with lightning! So we spent some quality time at the indoor pool again. This view from our balcony shows some low-lying clouds.

Sandpoint, June 26, 2013

Same time next year, and a couple of shots of the sunset:

Sandpoint, June 27, 2013

There are piles of geese around our hotel, and piles of goose poop. We could see many families of geese – it looks like the young geese are almost able to fly, but they still follow mom and dad around dutifully. They probably aren’t teenagers yet .