Going Home: Road Trip to Coeur d’Alene Vintage Market Days®

Who loves a good road trip to find vintage décor? When I found that Vintage Market Days^® was coming to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the town next door to where I lived as a kid, I knew I had to go!

This isn’t the typical vintage blog post I write every month with my friends. It has a little story or two added in because this vintage market was 352 miles away from home. It took us 5 hours and 43 minutes to get there.

I wanted to visit Coeur d’Alene and Hayden (where I lived from grades 5 through 8) again. My birthday and anniversary are both in July so I thought this would be a great way to celebrate. And of course, the vintage show was the cherry on top, where we were hoping to pick up a treasure or two.

It all came together and we were excited to go take the road trip. After all, it had been on my calendar for months. In this post, I’ll share some of the vintage highlights as well as some of the other things we did and saw.

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What is Vintage Market Days^®?

Vintage Market Days^® is an upscale, vintage-inspired, indoor/outdoor market featuring original art, antiques, clothing, jewelry, handmade treasures, home décor, outdoor furnishings, consumable treats, seasonal plantings, and a little more.

Quoting the website: “Vintage Market Days^® events are so much more than a flea market. Each Vintage Market Days^® event is a unique opportunity for vendors to display their talents and passions in creative venues”.

The market was open from Friday through Sunday in late July, and over 100 vendors set up booths. I heard from others that had been there in the past years that it was smaller this year and confined to one smaller area.

With the fairgrounds featuring 83 acres of green space, barns, and event space, I was pretty happy with the smaller venue this year. And my new knee was loving it as well.

Personal History About Hayden and Coeur d’Alene

It had been 42 years since I left the town of Hayden Lake, Idaho. At least it was called Hayden Lake when I lived there… now it’s just just “Hayden”.

How My Family Ended Up in Hayden Lake, Idaho

My mom, dad, brother, dog, and I moved up to Northern Idaho from California. There was little opportunity for my parents to buy a house down there and they thought moving to Northern Idaho would give our family a fresh start.

We had visited my aunt, uncle, and cousins in Coeur d’Alene the summer before and we all fell in love. Of course, the visit was during the summer. And Hayden Lake was much smaller at the time and more rural.

When we drove up from California in January we arrived at our new house on a very cold and dreary evening. My dad had gone up earlier to buy our first house, putting money down from the sale of our old Pinto. The rest of us had never ever seen the house we would be living in.

My mom cried for miles. She had grown up in the sun and at the beach. The dirty snow and freezing temperatures were shocking for all of us.

But the Summers Were Great

My brother and I thought we lived in paradise as kids. We could ride our bikes to Honeysuckle Beach after we did our chores. We stayed there for hours.

Above is a picture of what Honeysuckle Beach looks like now. Of course, things look very different from when we were growing up. This is also where we would launch our ski boat every weekend in the summer as a family. We would boat to the other end of the lake to the sandbar and meet all of our friends.

My brother and I would waterski behind our boat because there was so little room inside. It felt like we were skiing for miles and we were exhausted! But my brother and I weren’t about to admit it to anyone so we just hung on for dear life until we got to the other side.

We had so many amazing memories, but nothing much that I could recognize after coming back that weekend. The only thing that looked the same were my elementary and junior high schools. And even then, the elementary school had been sold.

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Our Day At The Market

We drove from our Spokane hotel to the Kootenai County Fairgrounds in Coeur d’Alene and arrived on Friday at around 8:15 AM.

I’m always looking for amazing flea markets and pop-ups so I was so excited to see what this market had to offer.

The best part of Vintage Market Days^® was that some of the content creators were invited to come an hour or so before the rest of the public. Talk about a unique shopping experience! It’s amazing what you can find before the general admission starts.

About the Vendor Booths

Most of the Vintage Market Days^® booths were inside the red barns and just a few were outdoors. It was like an indoor flea market with antiques, vintage home and garden decor, food trucks, and music.

But there were also quite a few booths that had toys for kids, apparel, jewelry, accessories, and craft items.

Of course, my favorite vendor booths were the ones selling true vintage items. I mean, if you’re going to a place called Vintage Market Days^®, you are expecting vintage, right?

There were some unique shops, or booths that had some really fun items for sale.

And of course, I was drawn to the vendor who was offering garden vintage pieces.

I really loved the wire cloches but they were just too expensive for my budget. As much as I loved a lot of the items at Vintage Market Days^®, I was not finding many good deals.

As I said earlier, there were apparel and accessory booths. I loved the garden T-shirts!

Meeting New Friends

Another fun thing about this trip is that I got to meet some of my Instagram friends. Tammy @lavenderbrookfarm with me above and Deanna @farm_girlatheart pictured a few pictures above and it was the first time meeting both of them.

Can you see me sweating? It was 100°F that weekend. I’m not a fan of that kind of heat. And I’m definitely not used to it!

Here was one of the booths outdoors. They also had a garden on the property.

FUN FACT: I participated in 4H at these fairgrounds back in the day. I think I was still in elementary school.

Vintage Finds We Brought Home

We only shopped on Friday since we were leaving to go back home on Saturday. But we did find a few things at Vintage Market Days^®. I would have bought so much more if the prices would have been a bit lower. There were some great things.

I found 3 leaded glass window strips (you can see the picture of them up above leaning on the breadboard). I bought the set for $58.00.

They are currently being worked on away from my house but they will be worth the wait. There will be a wood trim around them so I can use them as small faux transom windows above a few of my doors. I can’t wait to show you.

Enjoying the Trip

Despite the 100°F temperatures, we had a great time. Our hotel was right across a walking bridge that led to the Riverfront Park in Spokane, WA.

Where We Stayed

My husband and I stayed at the Davenport Centennial Hotel which was a great location.

All we had to do was walk across a bridge to the Spokane Riverfront Park. It was so pretty at night and a great walk after the temperatures cooled down.

This was the view from our hotel room. And to the left was a view of the Riverfront Park Pavilion which I’ll show you below.

The marketing manager was nice enough to upgrade us to a room with a river view.

The pavilion is in the upper left of the above image. The sun was just going down and we were on the walking bridge from the hotel to the riverfront park.

And this was the view of the Spokane River on the other side of the bridge.

Riverfront Park, Spokane, WA

The Riverfront Park was a place we went to only a handful of times as a kid.

The Pavilion and the Clock Tower remain from the ’74 Expo in the new Riverfront Park.

In the seventies, The Pavilion was draped in a white canvas. Now, it’s stunning as it shines brightly every evening. We were even lucky enough to witness a weekend light show.

Here’s the famous clock tower.

The gorgeous rounded building with the purple-lighted evening view is the Looff Carrousel. It looked like the carousel was closed in the evenings but still so beautiful to look at.

The Coeur d’Alene Vintage Market Days^® were so much fun to attend. It was a great experience, and I got to meet new friends and visit a place where I have so many fond memories.

If you have any questions or additional suggestions, feel free to share them in the comments below. And be sure to share this blog post link with anyone who may enjoy this post.

Until next time,

Happy Thrifting and Vintage Finding!

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