This free breakfast had its own surprises. There we found the now familiar waffle station. Instead of hard boiled eggs, however ... biscuits and gravy?! YES!
Ah, yeah ... um, I really like food.
So, after delicious hotel breakfast number two, we loaded our things into the car, hit the gas station across the street, and proceeded to get the heck out of Idaho...
...only to be greeted with the corner of Oregon that really still just looks like Idaho. Fortunately, that didn't last terribly long. We found out that they grow a lot of onions in that particular part of Oregon. That doesn't sound terribly interesting, but keep in mind I'm used to seeing fields of corn. And soybeans. And that's about it. And, compared to the flat plains of nothingness, fields of onions can be pretty fascinating.
After the onions and flat nothingness, it started to get more interesting. We followed a river through the Blue Mountains and into the vast expanses of pine that is the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. I don't know that I'd ever seen so many huge pine trees! The view from the top of one hill made it seem like they went on forever.
This wasn't the case, of course. As we headed down the other side of the mountains, the trees thinned out and eventually disappeared all together. We rounded the side of the last mountain and were greeted with a most spectacular view: a plain of farmland so flat the ground actually faded away in the haze before you could see the horizon! It was as if the world just ... vanished.
As it turns out, this was a particularly dangerous stretch of land for the old settlers on the Oregon Trail. The Columbia Plateau was (and to some degree still is) a barren, dusty stretch of land on the way to the Columbia River. There were hardly any trees or water along the plain, and many wagon-pulling animals were subjected to harsh dust storms and exhaustion.
Fortunately for us, we were driving a car and not a team of oxen, so the voyage was a little less arduous. We were just as relieved, however, when we saw a bridge in the distance. The Columbia River! And on the other side, the last state in our cross-country voyage: Washington.
Washington itself is an interesting state. It's divided neatly into rainy forest land in the west and semi-dry rolling plains in the east by the Cascade Mountains. There were some pretty interesting things in eastern Washington, namely fruit farms (Washington apples, peaches, and cherries, mostly) and...
Wineries. Acres and acres of grape vines and wineries. Apparently Washington is a big wine state which, had I known, would have made me even more excited to live here! After more money starts to come in, I'll be sure to report back on that, being the novice wine lover that I am.
After a couple of hours (and a delicious, guacamole loaded California Whopper from Burger King), we started heading back into the mountains. The first sign of the looming Cascades was a little glimpse of a snowy white peak off in the distance, and then another. This seemed cool until we looked at the map and realized how far away these peaks actually were, and then it became really cool. Even in the distance they looked huge, and they were literally hundreds of miles away! The first peak that floated into view, we learned, was probably Mount Adams, weighing in at over 12,000 feet. Shortly thereafter, we saw another peak. It seemed to be slightly smaller, but really it was just much farther away. That's right ... it was Mount Rainier! At nearly 14,500 feet, it's no wonder we could see it from so far away.
We were rapidly approaching what was by far our favorite part of the trip. With the mountains growing ever closer, we began to see signs for Snoqualmie Pass: the gateway through the Cascade Mountains to the Puget Sound area. It was amazingly beautiful. Almost too beautiful for words, in fact. So, instead of words, here I present to you a series of pictures and videos of our trip through the pass:
After leaving the pass, I kept expecting to come around a bend in the highway and be assaulted by civilization. Seattle was close, we knew. The highway signs and mile markers told us we were rapidly closing in on our destination. We passed through suburbs that we knew were there but couldn't see through the trees. We were excited for our first look at the city we would call home, and it came to us in a pretty surprising way...
That's right! Through tunnels! As someone who hasn't spent a lot of time around mountains, driving through tunnels is pretty cool. I'm sure it will get old after a while, though... There are a lot of tunnels in and around Seattle.
And there you have it! We finally made it. For a three day drive, it really wasn't all that bad. Honestly, it's a drive I would recommend! It has something for everyone, really. Beautiful landscapes, a sense of history, and a good look at how wild the Wild West still is to this day (Wyoming, I'm looking at you and all of your pronghorn antelopes).
Next time, I'll start to talk about Seattle proper: our first impressions, the trouble with traffic, and last but not least ... IKEA!
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