Lunch Along the Yakima with a few Friends

 

Monday September 22,2014 Quality Inn Room 122 Yakima, Washington

There are times that our bodies simply take over when it is time to step back and go a little slower and rest. Today was such a day. I slept soundly until 7 but Barb was still sleeping deeply. I got out my computer and determined distances and locations and costs of motels and she woke around 9. We got ourselves ready and then went and caught the last 15 minutes of breakfast. The young woman running the breakfast room said that she saw on FB that they are going to charge $2+ a month to use it effective Nov. 1. I said well guess what account I will be closing on Oct 31. She agreed although she said she is from Louisiana and that she uses FB to stay in touch with family and friends. I said, well I’ve always loved writing letters.

Since the temperature had dropped about 10 degrees, it was raining and there was actually some parking spots we decided to check out the Nutcracker Museum in Leavenworth. It doesn’t open until 1 pm!!!! So heck with that—and everything in the store that we admired, despite its very Alpine appearance was made in China.  Somehow it just didn’t appeal.  Besides so much of what is for sale here, including in the tea/ coffee shop is available at home.Went into the bakery and bought a huge salted pretzel to share on the road. Also Barb bought two Napoleons, while I bought a cream horn and a piece of cherry strudel. The taffy shop was closed and the girl in the nutcracker store said she didn’t know when they opened and sometimes they didn’t.  A very strange town. Took a picture of the sculpture in front of the Festhalle and then blew that popcorn stand.

A few miles down the road we stopped at Prey’s Fruit Stand. They have never heard of Seckel pears!  I bought them here all those years ago and they were delicious. The ones sent East were awful, of course, having to be picked to ship and never really developing the sugar level they achieve on the tree. I bought a different variety—forget the name—they are a bit bigger and Pedro says they are very sweet. I so hope so—pears are my favorite fruit and they are so often disappointing at home. Picked up some taffy and some Rocky Mtn cherry licorice from Montana—lol. A bottle of Sweet Adelaide wine—a blend  of several white varieties, grown and bottled in Cashmere, the home of Aplets and Cotlets—no longer a novelty since I have been able to get them in Walgreens.

Then it was off through the beautiful Blewett Pass to Ellensburg. Bought some gas there—$3.759/gallon. Then headed into the Yakima Canyon. What an incredibly wonderful drive—even when high above the river and railroad –it was just so peaceful and lovely. Barb and I don’t talk much while we are driving—we just love the silence with the scenery. Our conversations happen in the motel, in towns, shopping, eating in restaurants—but except for exclamations or passing comments on our surroundings we ride in companionable silence. Not even our CD’s though we are on the 3rd compilation CD.

And so, as we sat alongside the Yakima, with the door and sunroof open so as to hear the babbling water and wind in the grasses, as we ate our picnic lunch it was with wonder that Barb said look at those animals over there, what are they. I brought them in with my telephoto and it was a mountain sheep Ram with his harem-some of which looked quite young. We sat watching them go up from the river, step over the fence and slowly graze their way up the slope. Occasionally, he seemed to herd them up a bit faster or have to turn back and call the stragglers to catch up. Soon, all they would show us was their white butts. So, having finished eating, we reluctantly packed up and moved out.

The fruit trucks, other cars, the railroad and we twisted and turned through the rest of the canyon until we arrived at the town of Yakima and the Interstate, which crossed it and the Naches River, too.  Arrived at the Quality Inn and gathered our laundry—out of undies once more—and sat outside the laundry room chatting for a couple of hours, interspersed with transfers from washer to dryer and bouts of folding. All is clean, once more.

We didn’t cover much ground today but it is always necessary to make the laundry stop once in awhile. Tomorrow the Columbia River Gorge with all its wonderful waterfalls on a road built in 1910. Then we will be out of Washington and into Oregon. How far into Oregon, not sure, but another State under our belt.

So,once more, the Indulgent, Industrious Sisters bid you goodnight. Kathy and Barb