Sandpoint swings into summer with new wave of attention
Community picked as top place for summer vacations, retirement hot spot
The Sandpoint publicity machine has officially cranked up for the summer.
In next week's U.S. News and World Report, this little berg will be included in the list of the "10 Best Retirement Places" in the United States.
Reporter Emily Branden called me last week to ask a few questions. Instead, I asked her a a few.
"You have got to be kidding?" I said in an exaggerated response. "What kind of publication would list us as any type of retirement hot spot?"
She was taken aback, but listed affordability, moderate temperatures, Schweitzer and the small-town atmosphere as to what tipped the honor our way.
I was on a roll.
I told her the average selling price of a home in the Sandpoint area. She didn't balk, she lives in Washington, D.C.
I told her the winters are so cold and long here, even the polar bears don't visit. Emily wasn't backing down.
She was also right about Schweitzer. Despite ownership's best efforts, it is still an undiscovered skiers paradise. I have skied the Northwest, and there is no better ski experience than at Schweitzer.
My children have grown up skiing here and no other snow has touched their skies than Schweitzer snow.
As for small-town atmosphere, she had me there, too.
The small part of the world is beautiful and most people do make an effort to know their neighbors as well as pack out more than they packed in.
Look for the story in next week's U.S. News and World Report.
But, wait, there's more news …
In USA TODAY's Friday newspaper and online, the Life section featured a huge photo of a young man swinging from a familiar rope swing with a familiar Cedar Street Bridge in the background.
My friend, and Sandpoint booster, Steve Kirby notified me about the story.
The headline below the photo screamed: "15 unforgettable summer vacations."
The introduction to the piece began with: "Ask a travel writer 'What's your favorite place?' and the standard response is likely to be: 'Any place I haven't been.' But as summer vacation season shifts into high gear, USA TODAY's travel staffers pick three favorite warm-weather U.S. destinations they'd love to revisit on their own dime and time."
Sandpoint is No. 1 on the list, edging out The Big Island of Hawaii, Chicago architecture, Sante Fe, N.M., South Dakota, Texas barbecue country and 10 other "unforgettable summer vacations."
"I was smitten with this lakefront town the moment I saw it, tucked between the Cabinet and Selkirk mountains in Idaho's Panhandle like some Northwoods Brigadoon," wrote Laura Bly.
Bly wrote about Sandpoint three years ago, just about the same time two Sunset magazine articles about us hit the stands.
"I loved hearing the thwack of an old, spring-loaded wooden door at the Beyond Hope Resort on an August afternoon and a young boy's hollers as he plunged from a rope swing into sun-dappled Sand Creek," she wrote.
Bly also wrote about a sunset tour of the lake, a meteor shower and huckleberry daiquiris.
She reminds readers that three years after her article, "property values are soaring, and high-end, gated communities have appeared for the first time.
"Downtown traffic is more tangled than ever, thanks to a stalemate on a long-proposed highway bypass.
"But some things haven't changed: The first two weeks of August, the Festival at Sandpoint celebrates its 25th anniversary with musical performers that, once again, with an unpaid interloper: A resident osprey who makes regular victory laps above the lakeside picnic grounds with a hard-won fish in its grasp."
Nice …
Bonner County Dispatch entry of the week: Deputy was dispatched to Highway 2 near the mudhole in Priest River on May 26 on a case "to cover a report of an injured wild turkey. Turkey was not injured, just sunning itself in the roadway."
David Keyes is publisher of the Daily Bee.