Newport Washington and Little Diamond
Newport Washington is in the middle of nowhere…okay it’s actually an hour from Spokane, Sandpoint and Coeur d’Alene; but I digress! We found ourselves in this small town to film a very unique campground called Little Diamond. What makes it interesting is it’s actually 3 campgrounds in one: A KOA on one third, a Thousand Trails on another Third, and the last part is open to the public as an Encore Resort! Confused yet? Don’t be…all you really need to know is this campground may be out there, but it’s got a little of everything!
Normally I wouldn’t gush about a campground like this (resort style) but our experience here was great and if you have kids, it’s a no brainer!
Disc Golf, Driving Range, Mountain Bike Trails, Pool, Hot Tub, Stocked Fishing Pond…the list of amenities keeps on going. We even took a couple days to relax, knock around some balls, and throw a few discs.
What most surprised us was the warm weather! We visited in fall and the weather was absolutely perfect, such a world away from the foggy and rainy coast of Washington (where we’d spent a majority of the summer). In true family camping style the park hosted a flashlight candy hunt one night that made us jealous we weren’t 10 again. The laughter of all those happy kids, and not an electronic device in sight; transported me back to my camping adventures as a kid.
Here’s the video we filmed for the campground, I think it’s pretty obvious we were enjoying ourselves.
I’ll let you in on a little tent camping secret we learned from the regulars: sneak over to the KOA side for the showers, they’re the best in the park! Kinda random I know but we had 6 different people clue us in on the ‘secret’ so we thought it was our duty to share.
One day we decided to escape the campground and we hit the road for the ‘short’ 60 mile drive to Coeur d’Alene.
To be perfectly honest we were sad we visited! This little town is so quaint, the local natural grocery store was right up our alley, and the shopping and restaurant scene was totally hip. The thing is we only had a few hours of sun left and with our crazy schedule there was no way we’d have time to visit again (we already made plans to film our Day in the Life Video outside Spokane).
Oh well, we made the most of it by posing with the famous Mudgy the Moose, taking in a romantic sunset while sitting on the lake wall as the float planes and parasailers flew by, and of course stuffing our faces with yummy food and booze!
Of course Nikki decided to take our desert to the next level (making her own beer float)…and that’s why I love that lady!
If you find yourself in the eastern part of Washington make sure you stop by Newport, but most importantly learn from our mistake and plan a little extra time for visiting Sandpoint and Coeur d’Alene Idaho (and maybe Spokane too).
