Join the John A. Finch Arboretum this fall as they celebrate their 100th year.

They're holding their annual Fall Leaf Festival on Saturday, Oct. 27 from 11:00 to 2:00 p.m.

Huge pile of leaves will be on the grounds, plus crafts for people of all ages. They will also have informational booths on landscaping, pruning, and improving our environment.

The John A. Finch Arboretum, a botanical collection of trees and woody plants, is located in southwest Spokane on 65 acres of wooded hills along the Garden Springs Creek.

The c grounds are open daily during standard park hours.  Admission is free.  For additional information please call the Arboretum at (509) 624-4832.

Construction on the area's largest streets project is progressing along.

The most recent milestone has been the completition of the southbound lanes from Farwell to Francis. Southbound traffic is now using the new Freya roundabout to exit the freeway on the south end. This means the northern half of the freeway is now fully open.

Right now crews are working to complete the Parksmith Road Interchange to give better access to Mead from the freeway. The interchange should be open to traffic by Tuesday, October 2nd.

Crews will start working on construction of the south half of the freeway, which will eventually connect to I-90. The next step in construction will be to remove and replace the existing Francis Avenue Bridge to accomodate the new freeway.

Vandalism kept some city crews busy Tuesday morning as they cleaned up a pyramid of picnic tables in Riverfront Park. The table structure reached 32 feet in height and required a bucket truck from Urban Forestry and a forklift to unstack about 45 picnic tables one by one.

Lead foreman David Randolph with Spokane Parks discovered the structure when he showed up to work around 4 a.m. Randolph says they had to dismantle a similar structure on Saturday morning at the same location.

“I’m glad nobody was killed while they put it up and hopefully none of my crew will get killed while they take it down,” Randolph said.

The weekend shenanigans cost the city about $500 for the resources to take the structure down. Park crews had to repeat the same costs on Tuesday to go through the process again.

“We have to take down the top ten tables with a bucket truck which is very expensive and labor intensive and we will take the rest of them down with a fork lift,” Randolph explained.