From the Rockies to the Cascades

Day 10, July 9th
Distance travelled, 942kms
Wildlife..... nope

Next morning we woke to the birds singing the morning into being again, and decided that instead of picking our way through Washington State, we would make a push to the Cascades.  We had a crazy idea that we could get to Puget Sound and then over to Vancouver Island for a day before we got to our Pacific Coast destination of Bowen Island.

First, we stopped in Libby, Montana, a deceptively beautiful town at the edge of the Rockies.   I say deceptive, because although Libby is a really beautiful town, one I would consider living in, it was the site of a corporate environmental outrage in recent years.  The townsfolk mostly worked in an asbestos mine, and consequently the whole town was poisoned and had over 12,000 deaths from cancer before an outraged mine worker single-handedly forced the US government to act to clean up the town.

We stopped nonetheless.  A bit of solidarity with the townspeople, who were wonderfully friendly and hospitable.  We had breakfast in the Libby Cafe.  The ladies working there fed us with huckleberry flapjacks and coffee while I got caught up on bills and emails and all kinds of internet-related activity.

Then we drove out of the Rockies and down into the Idaho panhandle.  It was mixed deciduous and conifer forest with long shady driveways leading to secluded log cabins.  I wondered whether I would meet Viggo Mortensen, my all time favourite crush, who has a cabin in Idaho.

No luck.  My marriage safe for another while!

Then we came out of the forest and drove through farmland and passed into eastern Washington over a narrow bridge on a gorge, which had proved the last barrier to the westward push of people in the 1800s.

Then, suddenly, we were on prairie again.  Vast fields of wheat stretched goldern as far as we could see.  Only a thin line of blue on the western horizon convinced us we hadn't gotten turned around again in some strange accident of navigation.

By mid-afternoon, it was roasting.  We stopped at the Rooster Restaurant in Reardon for jalapeno burgers and then sweated through another two hours of flat prairie and 38 degree heat.

At Farmer, we stopped for gas.  It was stifling.  The only shade in the gas station was behind the ice cabinet on the forecourt.  Two travellers and their dog were tucked in there sheltering from the swelter.  She was from Quebec and had lived in Belfast.  He was from Wisconsin and they had been hopping freight trains to try to get to BC for the cherry harvest.

Their sign said Wenatchee, which was where we were headed, but we had no room for them unfortunately, so we had to leave them behind.

For another hour, the landscape changed again, into that almost desert landscape that stretches from the Okanagan Valley in BC right down to Mexico.  High ridges, covered in dwarf pines zig-zagged away from us to the north and south.  Up, up, up we went through a canyon to a high peak, and then down again through a series of switchbacks until we came out into the baking heat of the Columbia Valley wine district.

Cherry, apple, and orange groves stretched back from the road, and higher up in the hills, lines of vines stood to attention in the setting sun.  We passed a lake, surrounded by gated McMansions, the first we had seen on this trip.  We started seeing lots of Hispanic people, mostly driving beautiful classic Mustangs and pick up trucks.

Wenatchee was all hustle and bustle and towers of fruit boxes in loading bays, so we moved on through Leavensport, a tacky village all done up like a Bavarian alpine village, and finally made it to the cool, lushness of the Cascades. 

We found a state national park by the river and pitched tent in a swarm of hungry mosquitoes.  Once we built a fire and put our jeans on it wasn't too bad, so we drank a nice Columbia Valley red and roasted weiners and commented on the sheer diversity of this beautiful state.  I went to bed and listened to the river roar and wondered if we would see a vampire, so reminiscent of Forks was the woodland in which we were sited.

150 miles to the Pacific.