Spokane is built around the Spokane River, and so has steep hills and lovely bridges, trees, interesting architecture. Once we barely got west of Spokane, the terrain changed totally, with low hills, much of it covered in golden grass. But, then we saw acres and acres of some newer growth, bright green (winter wheat?), that was planted right up to the road's edge. We're passing to the south of Grand Coulee Dam, and we saw huge electricity transmission lines, marching south from the dam. We just saw the south end of the long lake that comes out of the dam - pretty impressive body of water, even this far south (about 30 miles). West of there, we started to see some mountains again.
Suddenly, we're into high bluffs on both sides of the road and covered in some kind of green moss. Other than the bluffs, the fields are rolling hills of that golden grass, sagebrush, interspersed with bright yellow bushy flowers. Looks like pictures of areas of Arizona. Beautiful. This is the beginning, I believe, of the Cascade Mountains. When we had driven down into then up out of the bluff area, we're back to plains and looking at the distant mountains. Wow - cool! No houses or any sign of humans for miles, then a house, surrounded by out buildings and quite a few trees - pretty spot in this undulating terrain. Next, we're winding up, then down, through stunning mountains, and stopped for a stroll and lunch in Leavenworth, Wa. - think Frankenmouth (Michigan friends), with more street-side shops and BIG mountains all around.
We arrived in the Seattle area around 5:00, picked up Michelle, Dan's daughter, and took her to dinner. Charming young woman - she and I pretty much dominated the conversation!
We camped Sunday night at Ft. Lewis, south of Takoma, where Dan gets good rates. Also, they have an auto "hobby" shop, where Dan plans to change the oil and do some other maintenance on the truck, while I do 2 weeks worth of laundry.
Not many pictures from Sunday - the few I thought I took in Leavenworth didn't take because I didn't have the memory card in the camera!
We're staying in a time share in Seattle until Thursday. Very nice, good location right downtown. The weather is great, clear and light jacket cool. Last night, we wandered around downtown with Michelle, through the Pike Place Market (after it closed for the day), had dinner at a very nice place. We walked to the Space Needle, and enjoyed the amazing view from up there. It felt good to walk - we must have walked 4 or 5 miles. Seattle is very walkable, with interesting architecture, watchable people (!), fun things to do.
The few pictures I have are of the view from the truck as we passed a mountain covered by lovely vegetation, and new aspen growth in places where there had been a snow slide. Also, one picture of an amazing motorcycle that we saw parked downtown last night! It had more chrome than I thought existed in the world, and LED lights all over it to show it's coolness.
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| the purple lights are LEDs placed in different spots on the bike - way cool! |
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| in the clouds |
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| Gena, Dan, and Michelle (Dan's daughter) |
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