Slight Detour: Good bye, Trinity and Happy Friday!

On Wednesday before the rain came, I drove to City Beach. Twas a sunny morning, and the view was beautiful.

I turned around and took a picture of what, for years, many of us locals have called the Edgewater.

The facility includes a motel and Trinity, one of Sandpoint's most fun restaurants.

Sadly, the news below, shared by restaurant manager Justin Dick, appeared on Facebook yesterday.

Our visits to Trinity have always been special, occurring maybe once or twice a year. Each time we have loved the spectacular view of Lake Pend Oreille and the Cabinet Mountains and the food ESPECIALLY the pecan-crusted chicken salad.

Such a loss for Sandpoint and ironic that its location in one of the most beautiful spots in our beautiful resort area would come to this end.

I hope that one of Justin's other restaurants could add that salad to the menu. That would ease the pain of this huge community loss.

Hello Trinity Family:

There are a lot of rumors swirling around about the future of Trinity at City Beach and I’ll try my best to set the record straight.

Some of you know that the Best Western was purchased well over a year ago by Averill Hospitality from the long-time owners, the Cox family.

While having a great working relationship with the Averill family, it has become uncertain if Trinity is in the plans for the redevelopment of the property. I have been operating Trinity on a month-to-month lease for some time.

While redevelopment is currently slated to happen in the next year or two, I can no longer continue to maintain the winter operating losses while trying to continue to put band-aids on a building that has needed serious repairs for the past 10-15 years and the operations of my two other restaurants.

Sandpoint business owners don’t often discuss how challenging it can be to operate and staff our businesses from October 1st until the beginning of summer.

As a result, many businesses have significant negative cash flow due to low customer volume. At the same time, many businesses retain their staff regardless of how bad the business can be during the winter months.

Given the uncertainty of Trinity’s future at the current location and the prospect of significant off-season losses, it is with a heavy heart that Trinity at City Beach will have its LAST DAY of the year on Saturday November 4th, 2023.

I don’t know if we’ll be able to reopen for the Summer or relocate or ever open Trinity again at this point; much discussion is still needed to determine how Trinity’s future plays out.

In the meantime, a huge THANK YOU to all our customers, long time locals and our visiting guests. We have made lifelong friendships with so many of you.

We’ve watched your families grow, but also have been there for each other in some of the darkest times we’ve all faced during our 14 years in operation. You have all made an impact in the life of my family and our staff.

To our staff, THANK YOU! I can’t even begin to express my gratitude to all of you. We have experienced the rollercoaster of life together inside and outside of work. We have watched each other grow as human beings, community members, and parents.

Every single one of you has changed my life for the better while working together, side by side for all these years. Many of you will have opportunities at my other operations, 113 Main and Jalapenos, over the course of the next couple of weeks, but I won’t be able to hang on to everyone.

We are in the process of contacting all of our future reservations and doing our best to get you moved over to 113 Main in the weeks ahead. We will also honor our Trinity gift certificates at 113 Main.

If I haven’t responded to you for the past couple of weeks, please understand that this has been a challenging and time-consuming process and I hope to speak to everyone in the weeks ahead.

Again, THANK YOU to everyone that has made it possible to operate such an amazing business for 14 years in Downtown Sandpoint! We have been the longest lessee of this property since its inception and I’m proud of everything we have accomplished while being here.

Please come visit us at 113 Main and Jalapenos for your all your culinary needs.

Until we meet again,

Justin Dick

😢😢😢😢

On a happier note, today is our daughter-in-law Debbie's birthday.

Wherever Debbie happens to be--Ireland or the local food bank or at home cuddling her beloveds, etc.---it's a happy, fun-filled time.

Hope you have a great day today, Debbie.

It was a rainy day yesterday ALL DAY.

So, dogs stayed inside except to do their duty and to play a couple of times in the shop.

Rainy days tend to mean more activity at the bird feeders, and yesterday the squirrels seemed ubiquitous.

It was hard to look out any window and NOT see a squirrel scampering off from the feeder or across the lawn.

They also tormented Bridie who had to sit on the other side of a glass door and watch them as they gluttonously stuffed their fat little bodies.

Bridie tried several times to go after them, but stopped short once her nose bumped the window.

Yesterday also marked the official start of Mouse Trap season. Bill set off these traps several times while loading them with peanut butter.

He says they are the most efficient even though they're a pain to load.

I've done mousetrap duty several times in the barn and am quite happy to turn over complete responsibility--from trap filling to corpse emptying--to Bill. Hope he has a bountiful season of decreasing the number of unwanted visitors.