Home to the Cold

Temperature and health, unfortunately...

Okay, so I'm back from my little excursion back east. The weather on both sides of the Cascades was dry and sunny and warm... until this morning, when the clouds moved in. Also this morning, my nose started itching in that manner that presages the onset of a cold; I grabbed Airborne on the way home, but I think I started too late to completely avert the disaster brewing in my sinuses.

How was the trip? Pretty good, actually. I made fair use of the Little Black Critter, since we had wifi at both places we stayed. Made a tiny bit of writing progress, but heck, I was on vacation, so I'm giving myself a pass on slacking.

Now, on to the trip in photos. (Yep, knew ya wanted this...)

SATURDAY
We headed out midafternoon on I-90, destined for the wild and exotic town of Cle Elum east of the summit.

Lake Keechalus
Two things tell you you're past the summit (aside from the roadsigns): you start seeing pine trees amongst the Douglas Firs, and you pass the Lake Keechalus reservoir. (You also start seeing rivers that flow "backwards," towards the east, but that's tougher to photograph from a car moving at 70 MPH.)

Home Away From Home (Night 1)
The other place we were staying claimed it had no vacancies on Saturday night, so our first stop was here. (Actually, it made us drive through "town" so we at least saw where food places and such were, so it was just as well we were here first.) It was small - so small that one had to squeeze past the edge of one bed to the bathroom through a gap less than a foot wide - but clean. Since I had the Little Black Critter with me, I actually made use of the unexpected wifi to annoy people online.

Retro Look
Nothing says "retro" like the old-fashioned "lean"....

The Cover-Up Uncovered
As the inn slowly filled for the night, a semi with a peculiar load pulled up for a spell. Clearly the government is using these to lure and trap invisible radioactive man-eating moths created by failed experiments with retroengineered spacecraft propulsion technology. Or maybe it's just something they use on a farm.

Only In A Town Like This...
Need I comment?

Anyway, Saturday night was spent mostly decompressing in the inn, with a Safeway sandwich and chips for dinner.

SUNDAY
Today we planned to move to our second- and third-night lodgings and poke around the area a bit more. It was my sister's birthday, and she wanted to find a place to sit in the woods for a while. Easier said than done...

Breakfast at the Cottage Cafe
The "hot breakfast" advertized by the Travelers Inn was not, actually, an in-house breakfast. Instead, we were given a coupon to redeem for a free breakfast at the cafe next door. (The hotel across the way also advertized "hot breakfast" on their sign, and I suspect they have the same arrangement. It makes sense, actually, and is probably more cost-effective than providing food directly.) With the breakfast we got a free hot beverage; since we're not coffee or tea people, we opted for the hot chocolate. It came with a generous helping of whipped cream; by eating my way through the center, I got a bit of a hot chocolate volcano going, which I thought was worthy of a photo. This says more about my photographic sensibilities than I probably intend it to... And, yes, it was a darned good breakfast.

Into the Woods
Winding back past Roslyn (where they filmed parts of Northern Exposure) and Ronald (even smaller), we hit what we thought would be a great place to get out and sit in the woods. Turns out that most of it is just campsites, and most of the campsites were occupied. The rest required a day use fee, but nowhere did we find where to pay it. We finally found picnic areas near the Wish-Poosh boat launch on Lake Cle Elum, where it told us what the cost was and where we could go without being charged for camping.

Out in the Country
Beyond the inn, the road wound on roughly parallel to the interstate; it was the "scenic" way between major towns, so we travelled along sceeing what could be scene. It was such quintissential farmland that I felt obligated to take quintessential farmland photos. (This photo and the next were actually taken when we pulled off for photo ops on the way back, so I wouldn't get creamed by cars going 50-60 MPH just to shap a few pictures.)

More Country
The road wound onward past that until we decided not to follow it any longer. We turned around in the middle of nowhere where there was a small store and an espresso stand. Even though there wasn't a town for miles and miles, the espresso stand had a line. If you build it...

Tacky Roadside Gift Place
Okay, not only is it a fiberglass cow (complete with udders), but she's standing placidly over a barbecue... this is just wrong in so many ways... The store she was at inexplicably specialized in Southwestern art. Nothing I needed, and no local postcards to be found. The whole of Cle Elum was devoid of local postcards, evidently.

THE Retro Burger Joint
Yep, big juicy retro burgers served here. Yep, we ate. Yep, it was good and probably horrible for us, too.

Telephone Museum
A little museum of old-time telephones, not much bigger than our house but still decent to walk through.

Stewart Lodge
Where we stayed for the second and third nights of our trip; yes, that's the freeway on/off ramp right there. And a Safeway right across the road. There's also a swimming pool practically in the middle of the parking lot, where we spent some time that evening. And, near as we could tell, it didn't fill up on Saturday night despite what their website said... Bigger rooms than the Travelers Inn (not tough to do), but it was perhaps the dimmest hotel room we've ever stayed in. Still, it did the job.
Later that night, we swung out to the boonies to look at stars. We parked by an old fence that creaked eerily in the night wind, along the kind of country road you'd break down on and never be seen again. Still, it was nice to see starry skies more like I remember as a kid, as opposed to the light-polluted nights we get around here now. We saw a falling star and the moonrise, then headed back to the lodge.

MONDAY
Today we planned to strike further east to explore Ellensburg and perhaps the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park, which we've heard about but never managed to visit before.

Getting Drier...
Fewer trees, even pines, and more brown than green show we're getting further east.

They Sound Serious
The museum part of Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park had some serious warnings for would-be petrified wood thieves; the museum had dozens of logs of the stuff all over the place.

Inside
A helpful sign if ever there was one...

Another Useful Sign
Didn't see any, though...

The View, A Log, and Petroglyphs
That's the mighty Columbia River down there... beautiful. The petroglyphs were saved when the dams along the Columbia flooded their original locations. Apparently, the art resembles no local tribes; the closest match is similar art found around Mexico, so the makers probably migrated through.

The Gift Shop That Time Forgot (And Proof)
And, yes, those chunks of petrified wood are about as big as they look. Anyway, inside they had a variety of rocks, including local petrified wood. The owners have mineral rights to a private stake near the park, and sales here actually benefit the state park without robbing the park of any remaining petrified wood, so it works out.
As we made our purchases, the lady at the checkout told us that today would be a great day to visit the Wild Horse Wind Farm, not too far away. It just opened in April, she said, and on a clear day you could see Mount Rainier. From Eastern Washington? We were skeptical, but after lunch we figured we'd check it out, since it was (relatively) near. First, though, we'd hit the Interpretive Trail two miles away, where they had some petrified logs protected in their "native" state.

The Winding Road and The Caged Log
The Interpretive Trail claimed to be only a 3/4 mile loop, along which fifteen petrified logs were to be seen, each protected by a cage and labeled as to the species. Well, in the heat, with the climb, it felt much, much, much longer. Along the way, I snapped a picture of the road leading out to it... and on to the wind farm. The petrified log is - or was, I suppose - a walnut. A whole different landscape then; nothing taller than sagebrush grows here now, and even it seems to struggle.

Windmills and The Mountain (with Perspective)
The windmills didn't look so big when we first saw them on the hill. Then we got closer... and closer... Still, impressive as they were, we doubted we'd see Rainier. Round about the time we reached the entrance to Wild Horse Wind Farm (leading to another three-mile climb to the interpretive center and conference hall - and I gotta say, you have to hate your employees to make them attend a conference all the way out here), though, we turned around and saw an old friend from west of the mountains. Yep, there's Mount Rainier coming out to say hello. The last picture is a feeble attempt to show just how big the windmills are. There's something fascinating and creepy simultaneously about the sight of them turning... and the sound.

The Ellensburg Phoenix
Painted on the side of beautiful old block of buildings in the Historical District. Next time we come to Eastern Washington (if there is one), we ought to stay in Ellensburg instead of Cle Elum. It had more restaurants and better gift shopping, plus it had some museums and such to do without trekking all over the state roadway network.

TUESDAY
No, no photos worth reprinting here. Today was the day I woke up with the itching nose and uncontrollable sneezing fits of an oncoming cold. It was also our last day. We checked out, hit the Cottage Cafe for hot chocolate and one last breakfast, then headed home via a couple scenic stops along the way. It's tough to hold a camera steady when you're chilled from unaccustomed cloud cover and cold wind and tired from sneezing half the day away.

Speaking of days slipping away, Tuesday's done just that, and I gotta go to work tomorrow if I can even crawl out the door. (Vacations, especially unexpected ones, don't pay for themselves, after all...)

Typos and link issues will be checked tomorrow. I gotta post and get to bed ASAP, as it's nearly 10:30.