Olympia, WA - Walla Walla, WA: 313 miles, 7hrs 30min drive time

"Why would you ever want to buy 300 frisbees?"

Our breakfast companions thusly instigated a discussion in the many ways that frisbees could indeed make themselves useful, including such ideas as furniture moving and the (relatively unoriginal) mass-gifting tactic of finding 300 people that need frisbees. This was the first time we had ever been to The Place for breakfast, which ended up being quite good - so good, in fact, that our before and after photos should make the difference like.. well:


B.G.: Before Grub
A.C.C.: After Copious Chowing

Perhaps those images should be reversed....

And so, we embarked - the cat wasn't too pleased about this, but we embarked anyway. There was very little hilarity to ensue until we hit highway 12 running east towards Yakima. Now, do keep in mind that a chunk of this is traveling during Labor Day weekend (we remain convinced that heading east on highways, not interstates, is good enough to avoid problems). As we travel along Highway 12, a couple of signs appear advertising yard sales - not all that unusual, considering that this is the right time of year for such things. What we didn't expect were the many variations on a theme, including:

...et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Thus, I hereby rename Highway 12 the Highway of A Million Yard Sales!

Now, for anyone who's ever been down Highway 12 (and everyone who hasn't), it's really a very pretty, scenic drive that goes directly over White Pass with no congestion whatsoever. However, we have the good fortune of visiting Packwood on a day when there's some massive town-wide festival or crafts fair or something going on, which meant that traffic crept through town at a lovely and pedestrian-inducing 5 miles/hour. During said crawl, we probably passed some sort of frisbee seller or a frisbee throwing event - we certainly passed a lot of wood carvings and quaint little places that we likely would have stopped at if it weren't for the festival. Especially inspiring while trying to figure out what was going on was rolling down the window and asking a passing teenage girl what was going on, only to have her shrug at us not once, but twice. Well, we were glad we weren't the only clueless ones in the area!

By the way, if anyone stops in Peters Inn, please do tell them Peter sent you and can only recommend this establishment by association and the look of the sign in front. It's on your left headed east on 12, right next to the Shell station and behind the gaggle of people meandering the streets.

Going over White Pass was really quite pretty, and forced me to recall days in my senior year of high school where my class went river rafting. Of course, since rafting isn't my thing, I stayed on the sidelines quite happily - but I did recognize the scenery because of it. This was also a good day because of my car having accumulated a lofty 29,000 miles on it, which will be trumped quite quickly in this trip by the 30,000 mile mark.

We stopped in Yakima - land of no yaks - and attempted quite bravely to find the Boxcar Diner in order to dine in it for lunch. Alas, we had forgotten that it was a Sunday, and said location was closed, so we wandered across the street to Tequila's, where we both treated ourselves to enchiladas. Now, I have to very strongly recommend this place for Mexican - it has the most juicy and succulent chicken I've ever tasted in any Mexican food. The downside is that, once you're done, you're a little sick of the richness of said fowl, so one plate's more than enough. Highly recommended!

Driving south along Highway 12 through Wallula, we started noticing a lot of haze in the skies - we couldn't for the life of us figure out why. This made the drive into Walla Walla proper on the highway very un-scenic, though I did get to point out the wind farm at Wallula Junction, which I had the chance to visit in my freshman year of college. This is really a very impressive farm, but (understandably) very windy. Alas, we couldn't see many turbines on our way in, so the impact was somewhat lost.

I was very surprised at the number of wineries that have popped up here in recent years. Now, every "Tourist Activity" sign you pass is wineries - that just goes to show that in the last five years, Washington State's reputation in the wine industry (as well as its ability to make wine) has changed drastically.

After checking in at the Super 8, we met up with my aunt and uncle and had dinner at The Homestead, a very good family restaurant a little off the Whitman campus. I learned from my uncle that the haze was from a wildfire burning southeast of Walla Walla - not on our route out of here tomorrow morning, thankfully!

If there's one thing to be said of my uncle, it's that his predictions can be a little vague. Tomorrow's destination is Butte, MT, which my uncle has apparently named "a little hole of a town". Well, we'll see about that. Another road-friendly warning from my aunt: apparently, if you see speed signs indicating that a turn should be taken at a particular speed in Idaho, you damn well better pay attention and go that speed. Washington, on the other hand, you can typically add 10 miles an hour to any such sign and be quite successful at it.

After a brief stop in Mountain View Cemetery to achieve my goal of paying my respects to my grandparents, we have retired to the Motel 8, which I can tell you has a great indoor pool and spa!

With that, I sign off - today, Walla Walla, tomorrow, Butte!

Question of the Day:

What was the name of the viewpoint where the image above was taken? (This really is a question - we didn't happen to write down the name.)