Parker Howell

After bicycling 187,000 miles in search of donations to support multiple sclerosis treatment, Thomas Beasley knows what type of businesses to hit up for money. Auto repair shops, hair salons, bars and tattoo parlors – in that order.

More than 100 parties throughout the Spokane area Tuesday night offered free food and a chance to chat with neighbors. But the annual National Night Out events were more than just social activities.

An air tanker dumped water on a wildfire Thursday in an industrial area of north Spokane as fire crews worked to keep the blaze away from nearby power lines. The fire burned an estimated 10 acres of tall grass and small pine trees near a cemetery at East Hawthorne and North Market roads. Propelled northeast by 5- to 10-mph winds, the plume of smoke generated by the blaze threatened power lines snaking through the intersection, said Department of Natural Resources spokesman Steve Harris. Smoke under the wires can cause them to ground out and trigger a power outage, he said.

Rod Christensen lost his soul mate in an instant Tuesday morning as he walked to catch a bus in north Spokane. Blind since birth, Christensen, 59, was being led across Rosewood Avenue by Justice, a yellow Labrador retriever, when the guide dog's harness was yanked away.

City crews scrambled on Wednesday to adjust a monitoring system that allowed raw sewage to spill undetected into the Spokane River, possibly for days or weeks. Engineers and other officials were considering whether to remove a piece of faulty pipe or whether to move or add sensors designed to warn when overflows occur, said Dave Mandyke, acting director of Spokane Public Works and Utilities.

Raw sewage may have spewed into the Spokane River for days or weeks near the Downriver Golf Course after a blocked pipe caused a gushing overflow that went unnoticed by city crews. "It's obvious that something has been happening for a while," said Richard Koch, a senior engineer with the state Department of Ecology, as he pointed to an unusual growth of brown algae on the riverbank as evidence.

A rustic dining hall at the Boy Scouts camp on Diamond Lake has sheltered thousands of boys from heat, snow and wind for more than 80 years. But Finch Lodge at Camp Cowles may be bulldozed and replaced with a new, multimillion-dollar dining facility if Scouting officials approve the project later this month. A group of volunteers is trying to persuade the executive board of the Boy Scouts' Inland Northwest Council to rehabilitate the building, which they call an important piece of local and scouting history. Although Scouting officials say renovation remains an option, they assert that constructing a new lodge would be cheaper and more efficient.

Solo runners and relay teams didn't just cover 34.3 miles of asphalt and gravel in the heat Saturday. They scaled a mountain. More than 200 trekked from the Clocktower in Riverfront Park to the summit of Mount Spokane in the annual Let's Climb a Mountain run, organized by the Bloomsday Road Runners Club.

After weeks of efforts by homeowners to stop the process, chain saws roared as crews began cutting down trees along Bernard Street on Spokane's South Hill on Thursday. A handful of neighbors watched as the first tree – a maple estimated at 60 to 70 years old – was limbed to ready it for removal. The logging of it and 16 other street trees is in preparation for a $1.8 million project to rebuild and resurface Bernard from West 14th Avenue to West 29th Avenue.

Twenty-three years ago, two Boy Scouts from Troop 325 were immortalized in bronze when a Spokane artist used them as models for a national scouting award trophy. Now a larger-than-life version of that statuette is being created to honor Scout leaders, including the man who spent more than three decades shaping the troop.

Pirates, dancers and the mayor were among the crowd gathered before daylight Friday at Riverfront Park for a chance in the spotlight of national television. At least 250 people gathered at 4 a.m. along the Spokane River, holding signs, cheering and hoping to appear on "The Early Show," which CBS broadcasts live on the East Coast, but three hours later in the West. Spokane was the eighth stop on the show's 16-city "Great American Vacation" summer tour.