From Seattle, you start out at Puget Sound, pass through an exciting big city and its attractive suburbs, and before you can say Holland America, you are in the tall, craggy, rough edged Cascade Mountains where it always rains, and then all of a sudden you are in fairly barren hill country where it hardly ever rains, and then you are in beautiful farming country where it must rain just the right amount, and then you are in canyon country where you find Grand Coulee Dam where you don’t care if it  rains because you have dammed up more water than you need, and then you are back into farming country, and then you are in Spokane where (in the metro area) 500,000 people live and, as you look around downtown finding your hotel, you are not impressed.

I am telling you this because I was behind the wheel most of the day and did not take pictures of the scenery, like I was able to do before. If I had been able to take pictures of the farmland, they would look like this

And the Coulee Corridor, like this

Of course, I took a few. Like the roof of EZ’s in Wenatchee.

EZ’s, by the way, seems to be in trouble. A sign says you should write the mayor. But we are not sure why.

And then there is the Wilbur WA Visitor Center.

Maybe we should write that mayor, too. Unless Wilbur is the mayor.

We are staying at the Hotel Indigo downtown, which is a trendy redo of an old hotel. There are several like that in Spokane. Ours is railroad based and our room, like all (?) is railroad themed. Here is a view from the bed.

Spokane is, I believe, a bit weird. Our chef last night said it was just paranoid and had an inferiority complex.

This post is weird, too. Totally out of sequence. Like we did go to Grand Coulee Dam. It was a big part of the day. But it was hours ago, and I haven’t really mentioned it yet. Here it is.

And the guy who made it possible.

By the way, do you know they only give tours on the weekends? And that the Visitor Center is weird. And that it abuts a very large Indian reservation “where tribal law applies”. And that one of it closest neighbors is a casino?

The restaurant in our hotel gets poor reviews. We ate here anyway and our reviews are very good. Plus nice conversations with the chef and bartender. I had Oregon rockfish, served with anise infused rice and slices of blood oranges and radish slices and a little spinach, and I ended with shared huckleberry ice cream.

Lunch was at Dollie’s Diner in Wilbur. You order at the counter. Edie wanted her sandwich on whole wheat. The young guy at the counter told me the choices were white wheat and sourdough. I said “you don’t have whole wheat?” He said they had white wheat and sourdough

Michelle told me that she did not think he said “white wheat and sourdough”, but thought he said “white, wheat and sourdough”. I thought she may be right, so I said “is your wheat “whole wheat””, to which he said “I don’t know”. So I said that if the wheat was whole wheat, she would want that and if not, sourdough would be good. When it came, it was on white.

And, oh, yes, because this is Washington and not West Virginia, even in small towns, you see….

Last night, for the firstvl time, two things happened. First, I had two drinks at dinner. Second, I slept poorly. Ya think there might be a connection?