Ahh….to be on the open road!

As it turns out, getting out of Eugene was half of the battle of day one. My beautiful wife is time challenged. This is no secret, and there is no denying it (although denial is part of the symptoms). It runs on her side of the family, like some sort of curse that afflicts the women in their mid-20s.  I thought it may skip a generation, but alas, more than one of my children suffer from the same affliction, and no amount of “fudging” the real launch time makes a difference. They seem to sense what the breaking point is of everyone else around them, and then delay just a “few more minutes” past that.

7A turned into 8A and finally 8:30A…but we DID achieve launch with no blood let.

We came armed with loads of music, a couple of “books on tape” (including one for our book club which meets a week after our return), and for the first time, tried playing Podcasts through the bluetooth in the new Highlander.

It was a raving success. In fact…we became so enthralled with “Binge-podding” the series, “Serial,” that we blew right by the exit to Hwy. 84, not realizing we had done so, until we were crossing the Columbia River into Washington and headed for Vancouver on I-205.

Holyfreakinshirt!!! A minor diversion that was repeated again in Hood River. Not kidding. The two “detours” cost us a mere 45 minutes of backtracking. But, hey…that was good for another chapter of “Serial.”

At chapter 8 (don’t tell us what happens!!!!!!!!) we rolled into Ritzville, WA, the ancestral hometown of Deb’s grandmother. It is an amazingly unchanged place…since it’s “growth spurt” in from 1890-1895, when the railroad built a main trunk line through it. Much of the town is now an historic district, with plaques explaining every building along the main street.  I’m not sure we saw more than 8 people on the streets…at 4PM in the afternoon. The ghosts run this place…

I am always struck by how quickly the land in Oregon and Washington change when heading East. The rich, lush forests turn into dessert, with golden fields of wheat, and expanses of Army storage dumps and nuclear waste facilities. Eastern Washington is the “Utah” of the Northwest. It is kind of barren…and you don’t want to drink the water from the rivers around Umatilla or Hanford. Trust me on that.

But, Spokane is lovely. Especially the area around Spokane Falls, where the 1983 World’s Fair took place. The restaurant where we ate overlooked the falls, and almost made us forget that we have another 8 hours of driving tomorrow…and only two more chapters of “Serial” Left.

So…what are YOUR favorite Podcasts?  We are going to need a ton…

Here are some snaps of Day One…

A Slight Diversion to Hood River