Spokane Is Beautiful!

It's the last day of the quarter for two out of three of my online classes. I keep trying to grade, but we're here in Spokane with our fiddling friend Judy Lungren and her husband (who shall remain nameless at his request) and stepdaughter Sabina. I resisted tunes last night, but tonight--I'm going for it!

Driving to Spokane
We had the most trouble so far getting out of Poulsbo (!)--some sort of incident tied things up near Agate Pass and had everyone driving the back roads to get around, including us. Once in Seattle, we both realized we only had hazy ideas on how to get to I-90, but Scott managed to intuit his way to the very beginning of the route! It was a hazy, pleasant day, and Mt. Rainier was in her glory. We could still see her, hundreds of miles later. (You can barely see her in the middle of the photo here.)


The van is crammed to the gills. Scott put a seat belt around all the junk on the back seat to keep things from falling on T-Lou, who is in greatly reduced circumstances on his tiny bed from Scott's shop. Except for some bizarre belches that smelled like fish, however, he did very well.










We made one of those necessary stops just east of North Bend at Rattlesnake Lake. A wonderful, quiet place with trails, kids, dogs.

Also, a little skeleton man in the glorified sani cans!

Moving on, we passed and thought about visiting the Petrified Ginko Forest at the Columbia River sometime. Far away on a ridge, we saw things that looked like giant striding skeletons. They turned out to be humungous wind turbines--hurrah!

Just before Moses Lake, we were alerted that the fences would have signs with flags, telling us what crop was growing in each spot. We saw alfalfa, grain corn, sweet corn, mash corn--well, no, wheat, potatoes, beans, peas, and timothy hay. No medical marijuana.

Fifty miles from Spokane we made another necessary stop at the Sprague Lake Rest Stop. Our attention was captured by the big "Don't Feed the Seagulls!" sign and a little kid standing by it feeding them. They shrieked and screamed and seemed much more aggressive than the PT ones.

Spokane
We found ourselves suddenly in a lush green city with old craftsman or interesting adobe houses, (and some of the boring junk houses, but not that much). Big established trees lined the roads and we quickly climbed up and could see the huge vista from whence we had come. And then we found our friends' house.

We've known Judy a long time, almost 20 years. She's a great fiddler, and we've had many a fun session with her. She likes lots of the raggy C tunes and Midwestern Chirps Smith stuff that we do, including our latest favorite of hers, "Root Hog or Die." Yes, music fans, we will learn this and bring it back if we can!

We had a tour of their grand old house, full of husband's bottle collection, and, to quote him, "junk." He is incredibly handy, so we admired all kinds of wonderful cabinets, gardening, plumbing, and major renovations. It was good to get on a large trampoline again! I still miss my old one. T-Lou surprised us all by jumping up with me, but we got him off! We all went out to dinner at a weird place with good food and strange stuff all over the place: a fish breaking through a drum, a toy bear riding a unicycle on a tightrope (back and forth), a giant space creature of some sort, and even a banjo uke with a trumpet device like an oldVictrola. I've seem these before in pictures--the age of experimentation back in the beginning of the twentieth century!

Then we had a tour of the tres rococo Hotel Davenport. It reminded me of hotels in San Francisco and New York, with lavish dark wood work, intricate gold plaster, cloudy white glass ceilings, eight-foot-high "vases," and, my favorite, old pictures of events from the beginning to the middle of the last century. You saw the women with long hair, then, suddenly, all of them in short hair, then, all of them with hats (by about WWII time). Young girls in white twirling around a maypole with a few hundred souls pressed into the balconies and on the edges. Bridal feasts. Some royalty.

After that, tunes for Judy and Scott, work for me. Bed was interesting. Since they have a cat, I slept in Vanita the Van with T-Lou. Around 4 a.m., the rains began and it sounded like machine guns on the van. You have to leave the windows open (especially with a dog) so that you can breathe. Thus, I had to strategically arrange towels under them to catch the floods. I woke again at 5 a.m., again at 7 a.m. and gave it up, arose, grabbed laptop, and worked in the van until everyone else got up.

The rains calmed down and we ended up having a wonderful little hike with Judy at The High Bridge and then People's Park, a network of trails, Ponderosa pines, marmot holes (and marmots!), flax flowers, Hangman Creek, and the roaring Spokane River. Mostly sun once we got through some nasty looking thunderhead sprinklings.










After a fabulous salad bar late lunch, we saw more of the mighty Spokane River




and went back for tunes, packing, talk and then sleep. Things were nice and quiet out in the van, but T-Lou had to do some serious leaning against moi just to reassure himself.

By the way, if you want more pictures, just go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/murphette/

Let me know if you have trouble viewing!