Sandpoint, Idaho Guide to North Idaho Information and Media

The Sites, Sounds and Smells of Americana

A CROSS-COUNTRY RIDE THROUGH AMERICA’S HEARTLAND

“When you ride, you see things you’d never see from a car,” explains Mel Dick, who returned from a cross-country bike ride from Sandpoint, Idaho, to Key West, Florida, just a few months ago. In the six months leading up to his trip, Mel road 20 to 75 miles every day to prepare for the grueling 4,000-mile ride that would take just two months.

It was like having a job—only each day instead of heading to the office, he’d jump on his bike for an average of 85 miles through the heartland of America, where he made new friends, connected with old ones, and gained a picture of life in America that inspired, sobered and delighted.

GOLDEN GUERNSEY GOODNESS

A LOOK INSIDE BONNER COUNTY’S ONLY GRADE A COW DAIRY

Drive down Dufort Road in Sagle, and tucked back in off a side road you’ll find Pleasant Meadow Creamery, a family owned, family run dairy that produces milk the gold old-fashioned way, and where the cows still graze freely in the fields. It’s Bonner and Kootenai counties’ only Grade A cow dairy, and as you drive up you can glimpse the Guernsey cows roaming contentedly in one of the several open fields.

The Herndon family owns and runs the dairy, which first started back in 2011 with one Guernsey cow, a commercial castoff from Lynden, Washington. But before she arrived, a dairy farm, and indeed cows themselves, weren’t in the picture at all.

A PATHWAY TO THE FUTURE

Changes in store for Sandpoint’s City Beach

Since City Beach was first formed almost 100 years ago in 1922 on land donated by the Northern Pacific Railroad, the waterfront land has served as a community gathering place for families, visitors and locals alike.

Improvements in the 1950s served to create a more welcoming and usable spot, without the flooding that early years saw in the area, and over the years, City Beach has become a popular spot cherished by locals and enjoyed by visitors. On any sunny summer day, its waterfront is filled with families and individuals enjoying the lake and grassy open spaces.