Spokane, WA

I walk weekly with a girlfriend and we try to find different places to walk around north Spokane. Last week she talked me into walking on the Centennial Trail at the Military Cemetery entrance. This can be reach from Government Way at mile marker 28. For us, we went past Spokane Falls Community College and turned right on Government Way and approximately 2 miles later you will see a sign for the Military Cemetery.

As I pulled in to the parking lot I was immediately impressed by the view. I knew this was going to be one of our better walks. However, when she asked me if I wanted an easy walk or a challenging walk, I should have known something was up. I said I was up for a challenging walk.

After we loaded up the strollers we headed towards the cemetery and what I thought was a slight hill. However, as we headed down and rounded the first curve I immediately said, this is a loop right? Nope, we had to eventually walk back up this same hill. The hill slightly reminds me of doomsday hill but with twists and turns!

As we walked along not only did we get some great conversation in, we also saw some spectacular views of the Spokane River. We ended up walking to the road, which I believe is Aubrey Park Way. You can walk all the way to the Bowl & Pitcher, but with strollers we did not want to walk on the road. We turned around and headed back.

I was starting to feel very comfortable with the walk until we rounded a bend and there was the hill. It did not look quite so bad going down, but going up and pushing a stroller made me wish for a knight in shinning armor to rescue me. I actually did wonder at one point if an ambulance could make it down if I had a heart attack!

After we made it back to the top of the hill and had some water, I realized it was not that bad, I was just out of shape. That being said, we are headed back there next week to walk again.

The loop we did was 3 miles total. If you head on the straight path out of the parking lot you can walk about 2 miles and then turn around and come back for a nice 4 mile walk. For more information on the Centennial Trail, visit their website at: www.spokanecentennialtrail.org/seg-west.htm.