Smurf Field

We hit the road early and happily left Spokane in the rear view mirror. It was rainy and foggy for the first twenty or thirty miles but just before we reached Pullman, WA it cleared-out.


So long Spokane.




Pullman seemed to be your typical college town (Washington State) and reminded us of Blacksburg except it was REALLY hilly and there was NOTHING else anywhere close.





Here's the Washington State Cougar.











Here's the biggest thing to hit Pullman since WSU beat UW. At the time both were winless in Div. 1 but it still took OT to determine the biggest loser. UW finished 0-12, WSU 2-10. There other win was Portland State. Maybe we'll have to come back for the Lentil Festival in Aug. so we can make it back to B'burg for actual football.





The surrounding countryside is called the Palouse Region and is very rich rolling hills that have been converted from prairie to wheat, barley and lentil farming. It's really amazing that they farm virtually road-to-road. It makes the region seem very artificial but they must turn out an amazing amount of wheat. The region has an unusual earthworm, the Palouse earthworm, that is white, grows to 3 ft. long, smells like lillies and spits in selfdefense. Who knew?



Further south we came to the Snake River canyon. The road just breaks over a hill and then plunges into the 2,000 ft. deep canyon. There are no trees and it's so immense you loose all perspective and get a little (OK, a lot) dizzy. We took the old road built in 1917 and it had a million switchbacks. There was no guardrail and Cindi didn't care much for the expansive view when she was on the outside edge. I didn't care much for it when I was on the outside either.




View into the Snake River gorge. They ain't kiddn' about the shoulder either.

















"Hey, what are you looking at? I was here first, and I don't need no stink'n fence!" (Note that this was on the road down into the Snake River gorge and those rotten posts are what pass for a guard rail in the few places that there is anything.)...get this the road's name is "Old Spiral Road" at least according to George (our GPS).




From there we followed various rivers and creeks all the way to Boise. One comment on the economy was when the road followed a spur railroad that had a line of furloughed pulpwood rail cars that was 17 miles long! That's a lot of lumberjacks, railworkers and millworkers out of work. The river gorges and high plateaus were spectacular and overall this was some of the best scenery of the trip. It would have been even better if the weather was better, but at least we got a few periods of real rain that washed the car off. This was the first rain of the whole trip.


We didn't get any really good pics, but here are the best we got.











On the last downhill run to Boise we left the rain behind and got a rainbow.








This has nothing to do with anything, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't name my convenience store chain 'Stinker'. I'm really sure that if there was a convince store chain named Stinker and I was Jack in the Box, I wouldn't get affiliated with them.








Hey, what'da know, Smurf Field really is blue.





Tomorrow, Reno or Bust.