Spokane, WA

Good morning, my blogging friends! It's good to see you again! After decades of dreaming and months of planning, we are finally on our way. It was a long day of driving to our first night's stop in Spokane, Washington. With I-84 still closed in both directions because of the Eagle Creek Fire, we crossed the Columbia River on the I-205 bridge

leaving our home state of Oregon,

and entering our neighboring state of Washington.

The fire is still burning in the Columbia Gorge. At last report, it was only 7% contained, even though it has been burning for more than a week. Such a disaster. The gorge was filled with smoke.

While we didn't see any burned out areas or, indeed, any flames, it was obvious that a huge battle is still being waged to save historic structures and precious infrastructure, not to mention the trees and wildlife that inhabit the gorge.

We traveled along Washington SR-14 past the Bridge of the Gods leading to Cascade Locks. The bridge is closed.

Eventually, we came to the Hood River Bridge leading into Hood River, Oregon.

Even in a passenger car, the bridge is narrow.

In our big rig, it was downright frightening, and Mike did some white-knuckle driving getting across, especially when we saw big trucks like this one coming toward us.

Tolls on the bridge are suspended for the time being, and soon, we found ourselves back home in Oregon again.

We didn't see many barns on yesterday's drive. Many were too far off the road to photograph, but mainly, this is an agricultural area without a lot of livestock. There are lots of grain silos, but not many barns. I nearly missed this one as we drove by.

From here, we continued on I-84 until we reached the turn off for I-82, leading to Umatilla, Oregon, and then crossing over again back into Washington. You might say this was an over, and over, and over again day.

Driving Northeast through Washington, north of Walla Walla, one encounters the very edges of The Palouse, which is an enormous wheat growing region. I've written about The Palouse following our two visits there, one in the fall, and one in the spring. You can find my blog posts for those here and then again here. It's a beautiful patchwork of many contrasts in color, and I encourage you to visit those links to see the images.

Again, we saw lots of grain silos, but not a lot of barns until we were closer to Spokane.

The wheat is harvested now, and farmers could be seen plowing and getting ready for the next planting. Rain will be here soon.

Finally, we came to some barns. Most were very far off the road, and so it was difficult to take very good pictures of them.

This road also took us past Washington's Channeled Scablands, a geologic formation left from the ice age. I wrote about the Scablands on a previous visit to Spokane, and you can read that blog post right here. It was during that visit that I met my good blogging friend, Kate. Hi, Kate!

After many miles and many hours, we topped a hill and the City of Spokane came into view. Spokane is Washington's second largest city behind Seattle. It is a charming place, looking very much like a city, but also seeming quite small.

Sadie was tense as usual when we arrived at our KOA spot for the night.

She decided to chill on the catio once Mike had it hung on the side of the fifth wheel.

Smitty amused himself taking selfies.

But he too was pretty tense. He took out his frustrations on a toy mouse he scouted out from the kitty cupboard.

The kitties are such seasoned travelers, they are doing amazingly well this first day out.

I wanted to show you my office on the road. This also serves as sewing table and dining table on the road. For convenience, the laptop needs to be able to slide easily across the table, and so I've always set it on a hand towel in the past. Just this past summer, I made a little doll quilt as a part of Kathleen Tracy's Small Quilt Challenge, and so the laptop now has it's own little quilt.

We also added a computer mouse for this trip. The touch pad on the laptop has driven me crazy for the last time.

And that's pretty much all the news I have for you. I've started the Sundresses stitchery now. When we stopped for lunch, Mike took a short nap, and I was able to do even more stitching on it. I've nearly finished this first cluster of flowers now.

Today's journey will take us to Butte, Montana, where we'll stay at least two nights. From there, we'll see the Ringing Rocks formation, but I'll have to tell you more about that later. This morning, we're going to make a quick trip to the grocery store and to fill up with diesel fuel, then we'll be back on the road.

For now, it's good knowing that my blogging friends in Florida are safe, although not all have reported about how their property fared in the storm. Keeping my fingers crossed for all of you, my friends.