SPOKANE RIVER -- With a $3,500 boost from the Spokane Canoe and Kayak Club's "access fund," the City of Spokane Valley has made improvements to the boater access area on the north side of the new Barker Road Bridge, as our S-R staffer Nina Culver reported last week. 

Club members have left a few buckets at the site and they encourage river visitors to scoop water from the river occasionally and irrigate the trees and shrubs planted at the site. The new plantings will need some nursing to help them get started and keep growing when the summer weather heats up.