End of the Road

Good morning, my friends. If you read yesterday's post, then you already know our yesterday was spent sight-seeing in the nearby towns of Zillah and Toppenish. We left the RV early to head down the road a mile to have a breakfast of our beloved Egg McMuffins, and then we made our trek to both towns. We were back at the camper before noon. We were staying in one of the less desirable private RV parks. I can't complain too much. The place was nothing fancy. The worst part is that the surrounding area is populated by feedlots and the accompanying flies. Just when we thought we'd swatted the last fly, another one would zoom by. It was beyond annoying. And...ewwww. With feedlots nearby, you just know where those flies have been spending their time.

So all of that to say we were just four hours from home. We decided to hitch up and head for the hills, in particular...our hill. And now we're home. We cut our trip short by two days and one destination. The final destination was to be the observatory in Goldendale, Washington, but it was closed for the winter. We could have walked around the outside, but home sounded better. And Smitty agrees with that assessment.

He's a happy guy purrched on his kitty pole where he can keep an eye on his propurrty.

The question I had upon arriving home was to check the garden for any corn that might still be there. (None.) Also, I wanted to see if the Firefighter dahlia had bloomed. And, yes. It has a couple of flowers on it. Perusing old blog posts, I've realized this one is an October bloomer. Don't expect anything sooner than that.

All right, so let's back up to yesterday morning, and I'll tell you about the final hours of our trip. After breakfast, our first stop was to see the Teapot Dome gas station in Zillah, Washington. 

Is this the cutest thing you've ever seen? Well...maybe not the "cutest," but it was cute nonetheless.

Here's the accompanying plaque designating its inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.

So, what's this all about? Government scandal was behind the construction of the 15-foot handled-and-spouted gas station.  The Teapot Dome oil reserve debacle began during the administration of President Warren Harding. In 1922 U.S. Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall leased, without competitive bidding, the Teapot Dome fields to oil operator Harry F. Sinclair. When the leases became public knowledge, Congress directed President Harding to cancel them. The Supreme Court declared the leases fraudulent and ruled Harding’s transfer of authority to Secretary Fall illegal. 

Although the President himself was not implicated in the transaction that had followed the transfer, the revelations of his associate's misconduct took a severe toll on his health, and he died before the full extent of the wrongdoing had been determined.  The transactions quickly became the subject of widely publicized Senate investigation. Secretary Fall was indicted for conspiracy and for accepting bribes.  Sinclair was subsequently sentenced to prison for contempt of the Senate.  The oil fields were restored to the U.S. Government through a Supreme Court decision in 1927. 

There was a small gift shop, but it was closed. I took this picture peering through the window.

The Teapot Dome Service Station was originally located on Hwy. 410 between Zillah and Granger.  It was handcrafted by Jack Ainsworth in 1922. In 1928 Mr. and Mrs. A.J. Thomas purchased the Teapot.  They operated the gas station along with a store fountain built on the same site. This was an era when gasoline dealers gave people something to look at and tell their friends about when they got home.

In 1978 the construction of I-82 forced the removal of the building from its original location. Five days before the scheduled move it was hit by a car and caved in. It had to be reconstructed which was no easy job because it was all hand-crafted. Fortunately, the building was reconstructed and then moved with the help of the State Dept. of Transportation some 1.2 miles to its’ current site. It has become an icon for Zillah because of its historical roots and longevity. In 2007, the Teapot was listed on the "Most Endangered List," but in 2012 the Teapot was moved to its current location in Zillah.

These are the two pumps outside.

When was the last time you saw gasoline this cheap? I'm old enough to remember when it was even cheaper.

Here's how it looks from the other side.

In the background of the image above is this pump. I'm old enough to have seen this kind of pump when it was actually pumping gas.

Here's the accompanying plaque.

On an adjacent site, I noticed this mural. It was a good introduction to our next stop in Toppenish.

So...on we went to Toppenish to see the City of Murals.

There are 79 murals in all. Each is numbered. Some are old and peeling. Some of the accompanying descriptive signs were unreadable. Of course, we didn't see all of them, and I didn't take pictures of all that we saw. Some were in shadow and hard to see in a photograph. Some had cars or other obstacles blocking a view of the whole thing. However, you can see all of them at this link. For now, you can whet your appetite with the ones I'm showing here. I've included the explanatory sign after the image of the mural.

The sign for the next two follows.

The left side of the sign for the next one was cut off by its own frame.

All of the murals were huge, but these next two were positively enormous.

This next one was on the side of a three-story building. Of the ones we saw, this one was the largest.

My dad used to talk about this Halloween prank. I have a feeling he might have participated a time or two.

There wasn't much blooming in our walk around town, but these roses were very fragrant.

Okay, and then we headed back to the RV. This was my only barn photo from yesterday.

Here's a picture of Washington's Stonehenge. We didn't stop because we've visited before. You can read my post about it right here.

And there it is...the Columbia River where it serves as the Washington/Oregon state line. We were just about to cross that bridge, and then home, sweet home!

We know we're in Oregon when Mt. Hood comes into view.

We still had about two hours to go, but now we're here. Today I'll be spending most of my time unpacking. I believe I can get it done in a single day, and then I can get back to my sewing. The coming week will be busy. I have an appointment with my dentist on Tuesday, and then Thursday we'll take Smitty to the vet. The old boy seems to have a case of "distress on the lower tract." I won't say any more than that. We think he's fine...probably he needs worming...but at his age, anything can happen. We're keeping our fingers crossed it's nothing serious. Also, the kids will be here for dinner on Friday. We're celebrating Erik's birthday a couple of weeks late.

So with all that going on, I might take a few days off from blogging. As I often say, I'll blog if there's anything of interest to tell you..."interest" being a relative term. Stay out of trouble for the next few days, and we'll chat again sometime next week.

Sunnyside, Washington

Good morning, my friends. We had another short drive yesterday…in the 90 mile range. We were back-tracking over some roads through the town of Quincy. Eventually, we came over a rise and took in this view of the Columbia River. We were going to cross the bridge you see below.

The river is so wide here that it was hard to get the whole thing in a single frame.

There was construction work on the bridge, making the lanes here narrow. Also, the bridge seemed super rickety. It’s good they’re working on it. We found ourselves just hoping it wouldn’t collapse as we crossed over.

We headed due west on I-90. Ahead was the mountain you see below. I could be wrong about this, but I believe it’s the mountain known as “Double Peak” which is located within the boundary of Mt. Rainier National Park. Maybe someone who knows Washington will set me straight if I’m wrong.

It was a good day for barns too.

Eventually we passed by the community of Yakima (in the foreground) with Mt. Rainier in the background.

And soon after that, we reached our RV park. So…whaddaya think? Too much ozempic for this guy?

Today we’ll drive about half an hour north to the community of Toppenish to see the murals there. And then we’ll find the Teapot Dome gas station in Zillah. These are some things I’ve wanted to see for several years. It should be a fun day.

With that, we’ll get on with it. I hope you have a fun day too. 

Ancient Lakes Trail

Good morning, my friends. It was a perfect day for hiking the Ancient Lakes Trail yesterday. We had both clouds and sun, and it kept us cool along a rather dry and unshaded path. But let's just back up to the start of the day. When I looked out our back window, this is what I saw:

Before we left, I had time to finish off the sheep. (Sorry about the wrinkles)

While we've been traveling, I learned that the designer of this pattern, Meg Hawkey, had passed away. I read that on Facebook, and I haven't been able to confirm it any other way. In any case, I've decided to call this piece "Meg's Flock," as a way of honoring one of my favorite designers, and because it's original name, "Home is Where My Flock Is," is awkward to keep typing.  

Now I've moved my hoop up, and I'll finish stitching the heart and the words. There are some flowers and leaves too, but the most time-consuming part of the piece is finished.

Okay, and then we headed out to find the trailhead. We left Sadie enjoying a morning sunbath.

We've been using the AllTrails app for all of our hikes this trip. The app is available without purchasing a membership, but when they offered the membership at half price, I decided to go ahead and cough up the change. By purchasing the membership, it opened up all of the app's capabilities. It's been a godsend. It will give us directions to the trailhead, and the maps of the trails are downloadable. If you are hiking in a place with no cell signal, you can still see the map. 

Along our way, we passed by many more square miles of apple orchards. The harvest is on, but the trees we saw yesterday were still loaded with apples.

Okay, and so we found the trailhead with no problem. The trail is a natural surface all the way.

It was a single trail until it split into a loop. This is the map from our AllTrails app. (It also gives detailed directions, and notifies us if we get off the main trail.) When we came to the fork, we decided to take the left fork and the upper portion of the trail...the high road, you might say.

Looking up was this towering edifice.

We were walking through another coulee...the Pothole Coulee. It is comprised of a deep, box-canyon formed over 15,000 years ago by catastrophic Ice Age floods.

Along the way, I spotted this bush.

Looking at it closer, I could see it had some kind of red berry. My phone identified this as a rose, but I doubt that. It could be a wild rose, I suppose, and these could be rosehips.

Indeed, we saw animal droppings all along the way and their droppings were filled with berries just like these.

Also along the way, we spotted lots of small waterfalls. We wondered where the water was coming from. The Google tells me that it comes from irrigation runoff and natural springs. At this time of year, the waterfalls were mere trickles. Here's one:

About that time, we spotted the first of several "ancient" lakes across the way. They are leftovers from when massive torrents of water from a glacial lake in Montana swept across Eastern Washington at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, scouring the basalt rock and gouging out the deep canyons and plunge pool basins. The individual lakes formed as deep plunge pools where roaring glacial waterfalls once crashed into the coulee floor. While the geologic basins themselves were carved during the Ice Age, much of the water currently filling the lakes today comes from 20th-century agricultural irrigation runoff from the Columbia Basin above us.

This hillside had lots of waterfalls. I stopped taking pictures of them after about the first half dozen.

Here, we spotted the largest waterfall along the way. 

For this one, I made a short video.

Toward the far end of the loop, we noticed this columnar basalt. We first learned about columnar basalt on a hike in Shenandoah National Park some years back. They consist of very dense stone, formed by great pressure into tall columns and basins. 

Here's another example, and if you look closely, you can see that the two sides of that section appear as if there is pressure on either side, forcing them into a pointed shape.

Okay, this is sad. We happened upon a burn site. This must have happened recently because we could smell it.

It was close to where another lake had formed.

We were at the turning point in the loop here.

There were ducks on the water. Here, they seem to be converging into a duck armada.

I believe these are the leadership ducks.

I took this next picture to show you how the trail along the lake had acted as a fire break.

We found a nice flat rock where we could sit and enjoy our Clif bars. Looking back the way we came, it looked like this:

From there, we started heading back. I took the picture below to show you the extent of the burn. It was too large to capture in a single frame.

And then, we just kept walking.

There wasn't much in the way of blooming things, but I captured this tennis ball-sized dandelion head.

And there was plenty of blooming rabbit brush. This is a member of the sunflower family.

Our hike was 4 miles, all told, and we were tired. The image below was taken as we came around the final bend in the road toward our campground. I've marked with a red dot the approximate location of our camper.

We've enjoyed our time here in Quincy. Today we'll be moving on to Toppenish, Washington. You might remember when we had to take our camper to the manufacturer in Yakima, Washington, for some work on one of the slides. We passed through Toppenish both coming and going, and I was quite taken with the murals. Toppenish is known as the City of Murals. You can read my post about it in that link I've given you. We didn't have a lot of time to spend in Toppenish on that trip, but I've always wanted to go back and see more of the murals. Also, we'll be making a daytrip to Zillah, Washington, to see the Teapot Dome Service Station, which is on the National Registry of Historic Places. It was another thing we missed on our trip, and I've always wanted to go back to see it.

Okay, so there's still more sight-seeing to do, but you can retire your hiking boots for the remainder of the trip. Orrrr...you could keep wearing them if you want. It's all the same to me. We're in no rush to get out of here this morning. I'm going to spend some time on my slow-stitching and play my word games, and then we'll be on our way. Buckle up, my friends. There's still more to see.