The rainy weather finally caught up with us. Last Wednesday, we drove south to visit Mount St. Helens, expecting some showers. The next day, we started to drive the 50 miles to get to the highest point that the Spirit Lake road goes, but eventually turned around because of a heavy ground fog. We decided that driving another 20 miles with about 4 feet of visibility wasn’t a good idea and we probably weren’t going see much of the mountain anyway. Too bad.
On Friday, we drove down to Portland for our “day away” from the RV life. Oh boy – a motel! After carrying in our pillowcases that contained our personal items (we don’t have room for luggage in the motorhome), we spread out and relaxed. Then we attended the NewSpace gallery opening. Dave has a print in the new show, and it’s rare that we get to see the shows that he is part of. We were disappointed to miss out meeting some friends from the recent Lazy Daze get-together. They came to the gallery, but somehow we missed each other. After that, we went to dinner at Denicolas, an Italian restaurant that had absolutely enormous portions of good food (Eggplant Parmesan) and many enormous people eating there.
We got a break from the rain the next day so we decided to reprise a drive down the Columbia Gorge. We drove the 14 miles up a side road to Larch Mountain. We thought it was clear enough to get some good views. Not all the mountains were “out” but it was pretty spectacular anyway. After that, we didn’t stop until Multnomah Lodge, where we had a very pleasant lunch. We crossed the river from Oregon to Washington at Cascade Locks and found many more views of the Columbia River from the north side. We stopped at the Cape Horn lookout and enjoyed the beautiful light on the water.
Sunday was supposed to be a fairly nice day, so we decided to go over the mountains, east to Yakima. There was some spritzing, but we made it easily over the 4,500-foot White Pass, and coasted downhill. Dave was driving when I yelled “Pull over now!” It was Mt. Rainier, poking through the clouds. This mountain, viewable from half of Washington, was visible to us for the second time on our trip.
After noting the lack of fall foliage on Highway 12 and looking at the weather week ahead, we finally gave up any plans to drive into the Cascades. We drove to the southeast Palouse section of Washington state, marveling at the rolling hills. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to pull off on the side of road with the motorhome and the weather was uniformly cloudy and gray. We had some trouble finding a place to stay; the tourist season is over and Colfax, the town we want to center in, didn’t seem to have an open RV park. We finally nested outside of town in the county fairgrounds. They were just turning the water off, so we got a good deal ($10 per night). After hooking up, we set off on a short reconnaissance trip. The terrain looked wonderful, in varying shades of gold, tan, green and dirt. The Palouse is about wheat, everywhere. It is amazing how much of the land is planted with wheat.
The next day, we went for a drive. In this rural area, there are interstates, highways, roads and dirt tracks. It’s easy to get off the main drag and the unfenced fields go right to the edge of the road. Although the country is composed of rolling hills, dry farming allows almost everything to be plowed and planted: hills, gullies, up, down, over and out. There are little unplowed islands, mostly containing trees or buildings, but some are inexplicably left untouched. The result is the opposite of a neat patchwork of squares; it’s farmland on acid. Our primary destination was Steptoe Butte State Park, a high point with a 360-degree view overlooking the Palouse. The road ascended, circling the butte, going higher and higher. It was surreal, mindblowing. The wind was blowing hard and the clouds were flying, causing an amazing light and shadow dance across the land. Wow!
We also visited the foremost landmark in Colfax – the Codger Pole, a chainsaw-carved monument that commemorates a football game rematch, 50 years after the original 1938 game. It’s 65 feet tall, it consists of portraits, carved into five upended red cedar logs, of the 51 players involved. The players are shown in old age but are wearing the football uniforms of the thirties. One of them is looking rather suspiciously at another codger, Dave.
The next morning we rose at 6 a.m. and went back to Steptoe Butte for dawn. It was extremely cold and windy, but we persevered in the name of art. At first I thought that dust was flying by us, but it was icy mist. I stayed outside the car to photograph as much as I could but the cold killed my ambition after a while. It was totally amazing to just look out the window at the light on the landscape. It is one of the most impressive viewpoints I have ever seen. We stopped for coffee and warmth in the small town of Rosalia, then moved on. We drove around 100 miles with lots of stops and we were both exhausted when we got back to the motorhome. We gave up on the idea of an afternoon trip.
Today we did another drive. Each little side road offers new vistas; it’s really fun driving around here.
We planned to move south to the town of Pullman, but can only stay for one night. Tomorrow the UW Cougars (Go Cougs!) play Stanford and the RV park is totally full tomorrow with people driving in to attend the game. We spoke with one guy who stayed in the RV park for half a day just so he would be early in the line to overnight with his motorhome in the stadium parking lot. I bet they do good tailgates there! We were going to do another little drive in the afternoon, but the light is lousy. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, so we may say farewell to the Palouse and move on to Walla Walla.
