I take a lot of photographs. My Dad used to take a lot of them too. We have thousands of slides from our life growing up outside of Washington, DC.
But I have a whole lot more.:-)
We just got back to Washington State after driving through Idaho and Montana. I'd never been there before. I've lived my whole life in blue states, but I wanted to see Montana and you have to drive through Idaho to get there.
We (that would be my husband of 36 years and our dog, Bungee) decided to go on this trip because we live on the coast of Washington and after 5 storms with winds over 80mp in one week we needed a break from the rain.
We just had to choose the freakin' coldest week of the year to do it. It was 15 in Butte this week. I've never done 15 before. It hurts. It hurts so bad that I took most of my photos from the car. Not all. It wasn't that cold starting out.
Washington is a beautiful state. So diverse in it's scenery. This along the Columbia Gorge at Stonehenge. They have a replica of Stonehenge near Goldendale. It was built by Sam Hill (not the Texas guy) who also built the Maryhill Museum of Art as a memorial to the men of Kittitas County who died in WWI.
They have a wind farm there. I love seeing these windmills. It just makes me feel good inside. Why would anyone be anti wind energy? I want one of my very own.
We drove on to Pendleton, OR. Where they make the blankets.
Bungee liked it.
One problem with taking a road trip in the winter - you run out of daylight really early and you can't see anything. (note to self)
Boise, ID. Very trippy town. I have problems with the Mormon Church that are personal. My mother's grandmother's family walked out to Salt Lake with Brigham Young. Boise is big on the LDS Church. It is the cleanest city I have ever seen. It looks like they built it for a movie. Full of old perfectly restored buildings and everything else looks like they built it last week.
Not a single cigarette butt, piece of old gum or scrap of paper are to be seen anywhere. No street people, homeless people or college students with dreds and tats. I mean NONE anywhere.
All of these buildings look like they were pressure washed yesterday.
Coming from DC originally, I have seen lots of old buildings that have been very well taken care of and are very beautifully restored, but I have never seen anything like Boise, ID. It was like Pleasantville.
This really stood out. The Only Condom Shop in Boise, or so the sign said. I tend to believe them.
As we got closer to Montana ( I say closer, but it was a long, long way) there were these tiny remote towns that were nearly ghost towns. I couldn't imagine what the people who lived in them did. I saw some sheep herders and real cowboys, but these towns will always stick in my mind. So remote and in a place almost as desolate as outer Mongolia. We drove through 300 miles of basically nothing. And here and there, sometimes 50 miles from anything, a little town with maybe 100 people living in it.
Lima and DuBois, ID
Driving hundreds of miles through basically the same topography is a bit daunting. I'm used to green. Everything was shades of beige for about 600 miles. I didn't realize we were so high up. We were up about 5500 ft.
We came to some mountains. Another shade of beige!
When we finally got to Butte it was almost dark. It was so cold that the next morning my husband just wanted to leave. I didn't get to take any pictures and I'm sad about that because there were some very cool looking buildings downtown that we saw in the dark the night before. I didn't know they allowed gambling everywhere in MT. There were casinos everywhere. Gas stations and mini marts had casinos in them. Lots of pawn shops.
These were taken just west of Butte. It was -3. Steam was rising off the streams and rivers the air was so cold.
I have to say that, in general, the people were nice enough. Not that kind of nice that the Sarah Palin types tell you the "real" people who live in the middle of the country are. Personally, some of the nicest people I ever met when traveling were in New York City. Some of the nastiest were in Arkansas. But people are probably mostly the same everywhere.
We had to drive through more Idaho before we got back to WA. It was really nice to come back here. After 30 years I just belong here, I guess. I know people love Idaho and Montana and probably hate the greenness and all the trees in the NW, but I'm happy to be back to my place on the beach, and so is Bungee.
UPDATE: I've always rolled my eyes at people who thank everyone for putting them on the rec list. Now I know why they do it.:-)
Thanks. It made my day.