In the pines around our campground, Bob spots a gorgeous bird. We find out it is a Clark's Nutcracker, a large grey bird with black wings, white wing tips, and white under his tail. He is eating the seeds out of the large pine cones. That explains why there are bits of pine cone all over the ground. This is a migratory bird which passes through Montana in the Fall and Spring.
We are excited to visit Lolo Hot Springs. Rt. 12 is part of the Lewis and Clark Trail. Although it is a beautiful drive, the Hot Springs itself is disappointing. It is privately owned and the "springs" has been made into a swimming pool. There are no other visitors and the owner is smoking. We decide not to pay the fee and head back home.
One nice thing about the scenery, though is the basoliths that are in the vicinity. They are gigantic rounded rocks formed in an area of the Cascade Range almost as big as Idaho originally. 54 million years ago, there was a meltdown of this part of the range which resulted in these unusual formations when they cracked and cooled.
There is a sign for a Moose Crossing, but unfortunately we see no moose. Many of the farms have beehives. Some have llamas and bison, as well as cows and goats.
Rosh Hashana is coming soon. We go in search of blintzes and fruit-on-the bottom yogurt. They are extremely hard to find in this area of the country. Noone here has even heard of blintzes and the only yogurts found in the stores, large or small, are the blended kind, full of gelatin and yuckiness.
Today at our campground, there are free cucumbers, and green and yellow squash. Fresh farm eggs for $1/dozen are waiting for us at the Rec Hall.
Tonight is Round Dancing. Bob comes for the snacks but does not stay. Corinne takes photos of the dancers' beautiful outfits, with all their crinolines, boots, and fancy cowboy hats. The caramel-covered brownies are really good.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Day 86- Sunday, 9/13/09, ON THE ROAD
Roadside walls on Hwy. 90 where they appear terraced are actually evidence of the glacial flood on the Columbia River Basin which left ripples of lava torn from the basalt as it was cooling.
Ten miles out from our campground, the terrain changes again, to lakes and white pine covered hills.
Who knew there was gold mining in Idaho? We also pass silver mines, saloons and old Spanish missions.
The ranch complexes have multiple buildings. There is usually a gateway made of gigantic logs in the shape of an upside down square "U".
At the rest stop, we luck upon another group of Navaho women who are selling their jewelry on blankets on the sidewalk. They are hundreds of miles from home, returning from a Pow-Wow in Idaho and heading back to Nevada.
Again Corinne finds piles of haystacks she wants to photograph. They are the round ones this time, piled high in alternating rows of perpendicular cylinders of hay. She finds the patterns beautiful, appealing to her sense of symmetry and mixed patterning.
The Clark Fork River seems a hundred miles long. It crosses under Highway 90 at least 10 times. Sometimes it is quiet, sometimes rocky and fully of whitewater.
We wonder how the Bitterroot Mountains that surround us got their name. Someone tells us that the Bitterroot was a food source for the Indians. I'd love to see what the plant looks like and taste it. Perhaps it has to be cooked to eliminate the bitterness, or even poisonous qualities.
When we arrive at our destination, The Square Dance Barn RV Park, there are fresh veggies waiting for us to take back to our "house", and a square dance that evening.
Not being square dancers, we are not allowed to join in, since everyone there is very experienced and we might mess up the squares. We enjoy watching, though. The people are very friendly.
There is a Western Wear shop in the barn and Bob buys a beautiful white shirt. He has been looking for one for months.
This campground is very unusual, in that the laundry facilities are free. The washers are outside under a roof. There are a dozen clotheslines strung up, and clothespins provided. We hang our wash on the lines, and by the time the dance is over, they are dry. I'm glad I have cute undies, since I'm not used to hanging my laundry out in public.
Ten miles out from our campground, the terrain changes again, to lakes and white pine covered hills.
Who knew there was gold mining in Idaho? We also pass silver mines, saloons and old Spanish missions.
The ranch complexes have multiple buildings. There is usually a gateway made of gigantic logs in the shape of an upside down square "U".
At the rest stop, we luck upon another group of Navaho women who are selling their jewelry on blankets on the sidewalk. They are hundreds of miles from home, returning from a Pow-Wow in Idaho and heading back to Nevada.
Again Corinne finds piles of haystacks she wants to photograph. They are the round ones this time, piled high in alternating rows of perpendicular cylinders of hay. She finds the patterns beautiful, appealing to her sense of symmetry and mixed patterning.
The Clark Fork River seems a hundred miles long. It crosses under Highway 90 at least 10 times. Sometimes it is quiet, sometimes rocky and fully of whitewater.
We wonder how the Bitterroot Mountains that surround us got their name. Someone tells us that the Bitterroot was a food source for the Indians. I'd love to see what the plant looks like and taste it. Perhaps it has to be cooked to eliminate the bitterness, or even poisonous qualities.
When we arrive at our destination, The Square Dance Barn RV Park, there are fresh veggies waiting for us to take back to our "house", and a square dance that evening.
Not being square dancers, we are not allowed to join in, since everyone there is very experienced and we might mess up the squares. We enjoy watching, though. The people are very friendly.
There is a Western Wear shop in the barn and Bob buys a beautiful white shirt. He has been looking for one for months.
This campground is very unusual, in that the laundry facilities are free. The washers are outside under a roof. There are a dozen clotheslines strung up, and clothespins provided. We hang our wash on the lines, and by the time the dance is over, they are dry. I'm glad I have cute undies, since I'm not used to hanging my laundry out in public.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Day 85 -Saturday, 9/12/09, ON THE ROAD
Bob wants to be able to buy cheap fishing licenses in every state where we travel and have discounts for people over 65.
There are fields upon fields of corn drying in the sun. The stacks of hay bales in the grassfields are sometimes as big as houses. Sometimes they are covered in green plastic, bungied down to keep them from blowing off.
A double tractor-trailer filled with square hay bales passes us. Corinne is fascinated with hay bales, but she would be more interested if they were round ones.
We pass a factory that makes the irrigators that we have been seeing all through the state of WA.
The farm fields are beautiful, with infinite colors of green, and so many different patterns made by the plows. Corinne loves it when we see close up what she has been admiring from airplanes all her life. Her favorites are fields with dark green alternating with light green stripes, or golden/green stripes.
One of the crops we pass for acres and acres has lime-green tops. We wonder what it is. Maybe it is potatoes, since we pass a huge building called "The Potato Bruise Lab".
Dust devils are blowing across the road. Seeing flat farmland at 2000 feet elevation is a surprise. When the plows or trucks drive down the dirt roads on the farms, they create clouds of dust for what seems like 1/4 mile.
There are fields upon fields of corn drying in the sun. The stacks of hay bales in the grassfields are sometimes as big as houses. Sometimes they are covered in green plastic, bungied down to keep them from blowing off.
A double tractor-trailer filled with square hay bales passes us. Corinne is fascinated with hay bales, but she would be more interested if they were round ones.
We pass a factory that makes the irrigators that we have been seeing all through the state of WA.
The farm fields are beautiful, with infinite colors of green, and so many different patterns made by the plows. Corinne loves it when we see close up what she has been admiring from airplanes all her life. Her favorites are fields with dark green alternating with light green stripes, or golden/green stripes.
One of the crops we pass for acres and acres has lime-green tops. We wonder what it is. Maybe it is potatoes, since we pass a huge building called "The Potato Bruise Lab".
Dust devils are blowing across the road. Seeing flat farmland at 2000 feet elevation is a surprise. When the plows or trucks drive down the dirt roads on the farms, they create clouds of dust for what seems like 1/4 mile.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Day 84 - Friday, 9/11/09, SETTLED
On our way to visit Grand Coulee Dam, we pass three beautiful small lakes - Lenore Lake, Park Lake and Blue Lake.
Around us is volcanic rock and glacial waterfalls, with desert scrub in between scattered farms and ranches. So different from the urban landscape of the last few weeks in Seattle.
There are signs that say "Hitchhiking Permitted" here. We are surprised, not thinking that hitchhiking was permitted anywhere any more.
The hills on both sides are vertically striped basalt formed by lava cooling, with house-sized rocks that floated along the lava stream and then were left in odd places. They are called "erratics".
On the way to Grand Coulee, we stop at an unexpected Viewpoint called "Dry Falls". There we read about humongous ice floes that melted 15,000 years ago, blocking the mouth of the Columbia River, creating a giant lake.
The resulting floods after all the ice melted created waterfalls bigger than Niagara Falls, and took with it miles and miles of rock and gravel which were deposited as cliffs on both sides of the water. These were called Coulees, which are wide canyons.
Grand Coulee dams the Columbia River and creates power for the Northwest and California. The Californians didn't want to use coal, so they buy power from Grand Coulee.
This is how "Gina the GPS" says the name of where we are staying: "So Plake Harvey Resort".
School has started. Summer vacations are over. There are vacancies at all the RV Parks and most of the motels and hotels. We are often the only people at the picnic areas where we stop now.
Around us is volcanic rock and glacial waterfalls, with desert scrub in between scattered farms and ranches. So different from the urban landscape of the last few weeks in Seattle.
There are signs that say "Hitchhiking Permitted" here. We are surprised, not thinking that hitchhiking was permitted anywhere any more.
The hills on both sides are vertically striped basalt formed by lava cooling, with house-sized rocks that floated along the lava stream and then were left in odd places. They are called "erratics".
On the way to Grand Coulee, we stop at an unexpected Viewpoint called "Dry Falls". There we read about humongous ice floes that melted 15,000 years ago, blocking the mouth of the Columbia River, creating a giant lake.
The resulting floods after all the ice melted created waterfalls bigger than Niagara Falls, and took with it miles and miles of rock and gravel which were deposited as cliffs on both sides of the water. These were called Coulees, which are wide canyons.
Grand Coulee dams the Columbia River and creates power for the Northwest and California. The Californians didn't want to use coal, so they buy power from Grand Coulee.
This is how "Gina the GPS" says the name of where we are staying: "So Plake Harvey Resort".
School has started. Summer vacations are over. There are vacancies at all the RV Parks and most of the motels and hotels. We are often the only people at the picnic areas where we stop now.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Day 83 - Thursday, 9/10/09- ON THE ROAD
We drive through Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mts. The Cascades are jagged above the treeline. On the way, we visit Wallace Falls.
As we are driving up a big hill, we hear someone honking at us and pointing to our car. We pull over, thinking someone is trying to tell us we have a problem with our RV. This has happened twice before. Once we ignored the warning and found when we reached our destination that our car had slid nearly halfway off the tow dolly. So we are not going to ignore this signal.
Suddenly we see a very familiar woman standing on the shoulder of the road with something dangling from her hands: Joy and Ricardo have driven 80 miles to Stevens Pass to catch us, thinking we have left our binoculars hanging on the doorway to our bedroom. But they are not ours.
On the way home, they have picked up two hitchhikers from Albuquerque. We laugh at their craziness, but are grateful they are such good and loyal friends.
The road takes us through a tunnel in the mountain. There are many old RR trestles over clear creeks with small rapids. Thousands of fish are struggling to swim upstream.
The cliffsides along the road are so likely to have rockslides that the highway department has installed steel mesh overlays with 6 inches of cable going through the mesh.
Our campground tonight is in Soap Lake, WA, so named because the water is so full of minerals it feels soapy . The sand around it has a layer of salts on top. If you go to the edge near the water, the mud is like quicksand.
The campground provides you with a hose to wash off the mineral water before exiting the area. You are not allowed to enter their pool wearing the same clothes with which you swim in Soap Lake.
Fall is beginning to show itself in the changing colors of the trees and ground-cover. This makes Leavenworth, the faux-German town in the "Bavarian Alps" all the more charming. We eat weinerschnitzel and sauerbraten at a local restaurant.
The roadsides are covered with apple orchards. Under the trees are 6 ft. square wooden containers for the apple-pickers. There are miles of green apples, then miles of red. Corinne tries to photograph the boxes, but in her quest for the perfect composition, ends up with nothing worth saving. This goes in the category of "You Can't Have Everything".
This is not all the State of Washington one would expect. It is dry and desert-like, with sandy hills, scrub and sagebrush between the irrigated orchards. Many of the orchards use rows of cedars for windbreaks.
As we are driving up a big hill, we hear someone honking at us and pointing to our car. We pull over, thinking someone is trying to tell us we have a problem with our RV. This has happened twice before. Once we ignored the warning and found when we reached our destination that our car had slid nearly halfway off the tow dolly. So we are not going to ignore this signal.
Suddenly we see a very familiar woman standing on the shoulder of the road with something dangling from her hands: Joy and Ricardo have driven 80 miles to Stevens Pass to catch us, thinking we have left our binoculars hanging on the doorway to our bedroom. But they are not ours.
On the way home, they have picked up two hitchhikers from Albuquerque. We laugh at their craziness, but are grateful they are such good and loyal friends.
The road takes us through a tunnel in the mountain. There are many old RR trestles over clear creeks with small rapids. Thousands of fish are struggling to swim upstream.
The cliffsides along the road are so likely to have rockslides that the highway department has installed steel mesh overlays with 6 inches of cable going through the mesh.
Our campground tonight is in Soap Lake, WA, so named because the water is so full of minerals it feels soapy . The sand around it has a layer of salts on top. If you go to the edge near the water, the mud is like quicksand.
The campground provides you with a hose to wash off the mineral water before exiting the area. You are not allowed to enter their pool wearing the same clothes with which you swim in Soap Lake.
Fall is beginning to show itself in the changing colors of the trees and ground-cover. This makes Leavenworth, the faux-German town in the "Bavarian Alps" all the more charming. We eat weinerschnitzel and sauerbraten at a local restaurant.
The roadsides are covered with apple orchards. Under the trees are 6 ft. square wooden containers for the apple-pickers. There are miles of green apples, then miles of red. Corinne tries to photograph the boxes, but in her quest for the perfect composition, ends up with nothing worth saving. This goes in the category of "You Can't Have Everything".
This is not all the State of Washington one would expect. It is dry and desert-like, with sandy hills, scrub and sagebrush between the irrigated orchards. Many of the orchards use rows of cedars for windbreaks.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Day 82- Wednesday, 9/9/09 - SETTLED
Ethan wants to introduce us to the teacher whose class he took at Pilchuck Glass School in July. We visit John at his studio on Whidby Island, Cultus Bay Glass. We take the ferry with our car.
John proudly shows us around his garden, and he gives us many veggies to take home. There is art everywhere on his property, in the most unexpected places, on the walls inside and out. It is even sticking out of some construction that is in process on the grounds.
Whidby Island is a most picturesque and peaceful place. It feels a bit like Paradise, far removed from the troubles of the Real World.
John's wife Meredith has just returned from a trade show with her Stubborn Twig Designs greeting cards. They are based on prints of work inspired by bird books which she prints on glass tiles. Ethan buys some from her and give it to us as a gift. Awwwww.
John shows us a Monkeypod tree from Brazil. We have seen it before and wondered what it was.
ROADKILL: Rug and burlap bag.
Ethan names our GPS Lady "Gina".
Before we leave Whidby Island, we go to a little seafood restaurant and get dozens of fantastic mussels which even Corinne, who is not much experienced with such things, enjoys.
There are farms right on the bay. What a view!
We stop at Deception Pass to walk across the bridge and observe the swirly currents. Hundreds of birds fly over and under the bridge. Bob and I can't agree on whether they are geese or cormorants.
We pass a defunct drive-in movie theater with twenties of Airstreams parked in the back. Bob wonders if perhaps the Airstreams were for rent for patrons who got too excited during the movie.
John proudly shows us around his garden, and he gives us many veggies to take home. There is art everywhere on his property, in the most unexpected places, on the walls inside and out. It is even sticking out of some construction that is in process on the grounds.
Whidby Island is a most picturesque and peaceful place. It feels a bit like Paradise, far removed from the troubles of the Real World.
John's wife Meredith has just returned from a trade show with her Stubborn Twig Designs greeting cards. They are based on prints of work inspired by bird books which she prints on glass tiles. Ethan buys some from her and give it to us as a gift. Awwwww.
John shows us a Monkeypod tree from Brazil. We have seen it before and wondered what it was.
ROADKILL: Rug and burlap bag.
Ethan names our GPS Lady "Gina".
Before we leave Whidby Island, we go to a little seafood restaurant and get dozens of fantastic mussels which even Corinne, who is not much experienced with such things, enjoys.
There are farms right on the bay. What a view!
We stop at Deception Pass to walk across the bridge and observe the swirly currents. Hundreds of birds fly over and under the bridge. Bob and I can't agree on whether they are geese or cormorants.
We pass a defunct drive-in movie theater with twenties of Airstreams parked in the back. Bob wonders if perhaps the Airstreams were for rent for patrons who got too excited during the movie.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Day 81-Tuesday, 9/8/09, SETTLED
Today we go to a Salmon Ladder on Puget Sound and watch three different kinds try to swim upstream. Once they get out, they jump for joy, literally, doing backflips and coming fully out of the water, sometimes in twos and threes. It's really something to see. They use the smell of the ocean to guide them from the fresh water to the salt. Underneath the fish ladder there are acrylic windows that allow us to see the salmon as they enter, stop and try to acclimate themselves to the reversing current of the bay where it meets the sea, and finally scoot themselves out the other end to the ocean.
In addition we watch two sets of boats move from the ocean to the sound through the Ballard Locks. They have to be raised up 15 feet to get out. Watching the staff work with the ropes to guide the boats through is fascinating. Boats don't have to pay a fee.
In the evening we have a wonderful dinner at an authentic Oaxican Mexican restaurant that is nothing like the usual Tex-Mex that we normally get. The mole' sauces are sweet and the tomatillo is out of this world. Bob gets tamales, a special treat since his sister-in-law Carmen was not able to make us any when we were in Texas, due to her injured wrist.
In addition we watch two sets of boats move from the ocean to the sound through the Ballard Locks. They have to be raised up 15 feet to get out. Watching the staff work with the ropes to guide the boats through is fascinating. Boats don't have to pay a fee.
In the evening we have a wonderful dinner at an authentic Oaxican Mexican restaurant that is nothing like the usual Tex-Mex that we normally get. The mole' sauces are sweet and the tomatillo is out of this world. Bob gets tamales, a special treat since his sister-in-law Carmen was not able to make us any when we were in Texas, due to her injured wrist.
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