From One Extreme to Another

Last Night's Sunset

NAS Whidbey Island, WA - 65 and sunshine this morning.  Figures, doesn't it?  The first day we wake to sun and warmth in 12 days is the day we leave. 

Moses Lake, WA - 95 and sunshine.  Wow, what a change, and yes, we're whining already about the heat!  No happy medium???  

As I mentioned yesterday, our plans to cross the Cascades and stay in a cooler climate for a couple of days got sacked when we discovered that the road was closed due to mudslides.  So, we had to fall back and regroup and ended up deciding to go south on I-5 to Bellevue, WA and head east on I-90.  The trip around the Seattle metropolitan area wasn't as bad as anticipated and it only took 2.5 hours to get down to I-90.  (We did have a 20 minute stop.)  Traffic on I-90 was good and we only had road construction for 50 miles - over Snoqualime Pass!  Not bad, eh?  

The scenery changed, obviously, from dense forests on Whidbey to a metropolitan area, to pine forests in the mountains, to farm lands, to lava rock, to farm land again, and then to desert.  All in one day!  

Hay Storage with Japanese writing.

In the valley that Ellensburg is in, the fields are all planted with timothy grass for hay and a little alfalfa.  All big business.  Didn't see many cattle, so where is this hay going?
It was piled up every where and at one point we noticed the Japanese writing on one of the tarps.  Are we shipping it there?  Have they bought up all the land and businesses? 

Something that always bugs me is that all over the country one drives past a farm or orchard and unless you're a farmer or botanist, who have to guess at the crop.  Well, today, for about 50 miles, the farmers posted signs telling you what they were raising!  It was nice, even though, it was only alfalfa, timothy grass, and corn.  Somewhere I saw a sign saying the area was big into producing potatoes, but I didn't recognize any potato plants along the highway.  

Stopped at a rest area - grass for people, desert scrub for dogs.  Well, that's understandable because if you have a dog you can't have a nice lawn.  Well, what really bugged me is that to get to the post that had the doggie bags for your use and signs to pick up after your pet everywhere, you had to tiptoe through dog poo.  What is wrong with people? 

We drove through George, Washington where the streets are named for presidents and there is a huge fruit warehouse called Valley Forge Fruits.  Cool, huh?

Our park tonight is OK - nice grassy areas around the RVs but the attitude of the staff is less than welcoming.  I called yesterday evening after we had to change plans, to reserve a site.   The office was closed, so I left my name and number and indicated what kind of site we needed and asked them to call back in the morning to let me know if they had anything available. No response from them. So, I called again around 10am and went through the same information drill. Still no response!  At about 1pm I called again and got a human being who was non-apologetic and really quite officious.  But they did have a site for us and I booked it.  Now, my two loyal readers will tell you that I have issues with answering machines but I'm sure the RV park staff got messages.  When we arrived the lady was busy helping some kids - making them smoothies.  She was the only one in the office.  She did not acknowledge me at all.  When she had finished with the kids she did thank me for waiting.  When I told her I had called several times, her response, was "I'm sorry, how do you want to pay?" 

Maggie's adventures - well, the first 1.5 hours were her usual hyperness.  We stopped for a break and she calmed down afterward, but not so much that she relaxed enough to sleep.  She ended up sitting on my lap the last hour or so with her eyes closed, but refusing to lie down.  And, brother-in-law, I did try your advice and not hook her to the seat belt.  It made a slight difference but I did notice today that when she finally relaxes and then the road surface changes, she gets all "worried" again.   She collapsed when we got her set up in her pen - which is the first thing we do when we pull into an RV site.  Then, we left her to go get fuel - she was crashed out on the kitchen floor and looked like we would face some serious resistance if tried to get her back into the truck. So, Rog says "let her stay - she's really tired." We came home to no screen in the front door - totally ripped out.  She has been so good, something got her going tonight, apparently.  The bright side - it's too hot to have the door open to use the screen door anyway, so there is no big hurry to fix it.  How's that for the glass being half-full rather than half-empty?  (Rog says that I just can't help my optimism - which he does not always share.)

We are going to take a side trip tomorrow and go up to see the Grand Coulee Dam.  It's about 70 miles north and we found an RV park so we can leave Maggs in the RV air conditioning while we tour the dam.  Who knows what we will come home to.