There is a lot to love about living in
the inland Northwest, and here at Crim 2,
we love to celebrate the people, businesses,
and sites that make the area so great.
We bring you these stories every week
as part of our Inland Northwest series.
Thanks for joining us.
I'm Channing Curtis,
and right now we want to take a look
at some of our most popular stories.
The first one takes us to a
Cliff high above Lake Ponderay,
where someone has the chance to
live like a king or a queen and
a real life castle for sale.
It's absolutely breathtaking. I
mean, it gives me chills.
Welcome to Castle von Frankston. Be
careful with the step.
There's plenty of food and
refreshments and beheadings to come.
Started the whole project back in 2005.
I met a castle builder through music.
He and I played music together and he
also built a castle up on Schweitzer. My
buddy always used to ask me, why are
you building a castle?
And answer him with how many castle
builders do you know? I know one.
This would be how he visioned
it to be in
the end when it was completed. Wow,
it's really beautiful.
It's so incredibly different.
It all started actually
finding the property.
It was on a 70 foot Cliff,
perfect for building a castle.
We started building it and we
played music at the same time.
Remember the accoustics
inside the castle when I play
my acoustic guitar? It just
resonates. It's beautiful.
We'd have many nights up in
the tower playing music and
boats would line up out front
and watch us listen to us play.
It's a musical.
From afar you envisioned something that
you would assume you'd see inside,
and it's nothing what you would imagine.
It's it's entirely medieval times and we've
spent a lot of time on Lake Ponderay
and we would come park our boats
in front of the castle and eat our
lunch every year. We would do an awe
over the castle and what
was it like inside? And
here I am. It's pretty spectacular.
18 years, almost two decades.
The future is I want to meet the right
medievalist to take over from me.
A new king is on the
horizon so I can actually
spend more time with my children.
It's obviously not something that
you built to have a public, correct?
Yeah, I love the privacy.
Castles were built to keep things out.
It's been the coolest thing.
One of the coolest things
you've ever done. Ever.
This is the best thing I've ever done
other than raising my kids. Yeah.
From One North Idaho Lake to another,
our next story takes us
to Lake Coeur d'Alene,
where a local woman became the first
person to swim the lakes entire length.
Photographer Dave Somers caught up
with her to talk about her training
and dedication to take on the distance.
When I was swimming, I thought to myself,
I'm never doing this again. Ever.
I knew that, from what I can tell, Cordalane
was never sworn before the whole length,
and so I thought, you know,
it would be really cool to
be the first one to do that.
I started at Heyburn State Park
on the South end and then finished
at Tubbs Hill Beach, 24 miles.
Well, it took me 16 hours and 38 minutes.
It started just after 4:00 PM on
Sunday and then went through the
night and finished Monday at 8:40 AM.
That was my longest swim, yeah.
Last year I swam in Lake Ponderay
and I did A20K about 12 miles,
so this is double that.
It took me at least a year of really
looking at all the details that go
into it and planning where I wanted to
start and stop and gathering people.
I started jokingly say that the
planning for the swim was harder
than the swim itself because it
just takes so much to pull together
and in order to do it the right
way so that it can be ratified
and following the right rules.
I couldn't touch the boat
intentionally or anyone around me.
No wetsuit, no fins,
nothing to add like a swim.
Along the way,
some boat traffic starting out.
But then once the the night
time came I didn't even have
to worry about boats anymore.
I was worried about night time.
I didn't know what to expect.
I've never swam in the night
before and so I didn't know.
You know what? I see things down there.
Shadows. Would I be scared?
Would I run into stuff that I couldn't see?
But it was the most perfect night of
actually my favorite part of the whole swim.
I felt pretty good throughout.
Definitely near the end of my arms.
Felt very sluggish and hard to
even lift out of the water.
But I I never wanted to stop.
I never thought to myself, oh,
I just want to get on the boat.
Or, you know,
there was points where I was like,
I'm sick of this.
I I wish the swimming was over.
But yeah, never have thought of.
I'm ready to quit.
Looking back a week later,
I already got the bug to try something else,
and I can't.
I don't know yet what that is,
but I definitely don't feel
like I'm finished with this.
I think I want to do some other long
distance lakes, rivers, who knows what,
but yeah, he goes channel.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, if I had the opportunity,
I would definitely do that.
Yeah.
Congratulations to Kim and also
Congrats to the quilting beat.
The local quilt shop was named one
of the top shops in the country,
so we went to check it out.
I do believe Scott nominated us.
It's weird, you know,
because we just think it's just us here,
you know, taking care of our customers
feels weird that there's other
people that in other States and.
That actually care about
what we're doing here.
It's an article about the store in about us,
and then a quilt that Laurie Kine
designed for this particular project.
Here's one thing,
they're already really busy.
So how much more are they
going to be able to take?
I think we have the employees
that'll be able to handle it.
I wish our classroom was bigger so that
we could take care of more students.
We do about 100 classes a month.
But quilting?
I mean, as you can see it,
you just really feel like
you've accomplished something.
We always have chocolate and it
keeps me social that in the last
two years it's been so hard and we
always have coffee fun to be here.
You guys do OK, during
all the COVID shutdown we did because
people stayed at home in so masks.
Yeah, the tech room saw a lot
of old dusty sewing machines
coming out of grandma's garage.
If you ask our customers,
probably 90% of the stuff they make,
they give away as either
donated or gifts. One
of the things that I wanted to
do when I retired that still
is on my list is I'm going to
quilt quilts for Morningstar.
The boys home, I have one there
for my son and I am so grateful
that that's what they do and
has brought him such comfort.
I think providing
the place to actually come and be a community
and create and and inspire each other,
that's what we're doing.
We're just providing the place
and the and the product.
It's not about us, it's about the
community and about the customers.
They make the quilting bee,
it's a community store there.
It's it's all about them.
I think there's anything else?
No, I'm pretty good. OK.
As soon as we posted our
story about the quilting bee,
it quickly went viral with the
magazine article bringing in
even more attention to the shop.
And with all of that buzz,
we sent our photographer,
Dave Somers back to the shop to talk
about their new found popularity.
Come on in, the magazine came
out on April 29th and we had the
launch party for a week after that.
There was not enough room.
We had to kick the employees cars
out across the street into the field
and all this kind of stuff that was.
It was pretty packed.
We had a lot of fun,
it was a lot of good energy and we had
over 600 people enter into the raffling.
We had two machines we raffled
off and two baskets.
We sold over 400 magazines,
most of which are autographed.
I am shocked at the response.
Out of the area,
we've sold even autographed ones clear
across the United States of New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Minnesota
and this is kind of really cool to
see that the store is kind of here
and getting this national attention.
We are also selling the kits that are
featured in the in the magazine and
we're shipping those all over the place.
So that's fun too. And we've had a
lot of a lot of new people come in.
It's fun to see the industry get recognized.
Have a really engaged community,
and a lot of people that come
here follow us on Facebook.
A lot of people will comment
on every single post we make.
A lot of people like every single post we do,
and it's all positive.
There's very rarely anything
anyone even remotely neutral
has to say about everything.
Everything is really uplifting,
and that's just kind of an extension of what
the quilting these kind of trying to be,
because the quilting bee is a term
in the quilting world that kind
of refers to a group of people
coming together to kind of. Help.
So each other's projects and that's
kind of what the purpose of the store is,
the kind of service,
a little hub for everybody to come
together and kind of create together.
Now I think part of the fun in going in
shops like the quilting bee is that you
never know what you're going to find and
that's truly the case in our next story.
A couple in Okanagan was trying to breathe
new life into an old building when they
found something unexpected. Take a
look. I was dumbfounded.
It doesn't take much to do that for me,
but I was pretty like, OK,
this is pretty weird.
We bought the building.
We kind of got a rough plan like,
OK, we're going to clean it up.
We got to the walls,
which were lathe and plaster,
and they were pretty deteriorated.
I was looking at it and I was like,
well, let's let's see what's what's
behind there because we picked away
at a little bit of it under one of the
faux columns that had been on the walls.
So we started pulling things away and we
found this segment first right behind us,
exposed most of this wall.
And then one of my guys was like,
hey, I think there might be another
painting on the wall behind us.
And I said, no, no, no, there's no way.
And sure enough, there was another.
60 foot painting.
He called me and he like,
there's a there's a huge painting
behind the wall. I'm going.
What are you talking about?
That's when everything
just started. Everyone was coming
in and going. We heard about this
small town where it travels fast.
I've lived here since I was two
years old, which is 90 years old.
My dad bought this building in 1938 or 39.
I was about in the 6th grade
at a grocery store here.
And as we grew up, we all worked here.
It's been everything.
I mean, this this started out as a.
Like a play theater or movie theater,
a butcher shop, a grocery store,
a feed store, House of draperies, a bank.
I mean, you've got so much history here.
This place is is as Okanagan as it gets.
I can't tell you how many phone calls
I've had from people that have.
They've seen this all over.
How it's gotten all over the country.
I don't know.
You never had never seen it?
No, because we had shelves up in your
own canned goods all along these shows,
and there was probably wallboard over them.
So no, we never saw.
But the Okanogan Historical Society found
an article talking about this painting.
A man named WJ Mcconnon came from
Wenatchee in the early 1900s and painted
this and it it describes it perfectly.
120 feet of canvas landscape done
in light tan. Our big goal is
to take and not, not restore it.
You know, it's, you know,
it's not something that we want to repaint.
It's something we want to conserve.
I think it's it's really,
it's really a miracle that they
found them and they're in good
condition and they'll be really
neat for them to be refurbished.
And people be able to come
in and see them and when you
get your restaurant going,
and so it's a really neat
thing. It was like a lightning bolt
hit and everybody was type in there.
I saw that. I shopped there as a kid.
I went to the House of Draperies,
I owned the House of draperies,
and it's just this outpouring
of support from the Community
and and the the country at large
at this point come to Okanogan,
we joke whenever we go out and work,
we're driving into a postcard
is what we say most mornings.
There's a lot of rich local history
and we're not just saying that. Now
we have many more inland N best
stories available for you to
watch right now on Creme 2 plus.
To find them, just navigate to the
news tab at the top of the screen,
then Scroll down to our
inland N best playlist.
If you don't have CRIM 2 plus yet,
you can download it on your Roku
or Amazon Fire stick right now.
I'm Channing Curtis.
Thanks so much for watching,
and be sure to keep it on Cream
2 for more inland N best stories.