07.04.2023 - happy birthday, america

as is the new normal, up by 5:00 am.  making sure the squirrels aren't attacking my gear.  mosquitos aren't an issue.  all is good.

we're packed and off, down to the main road and the 76 gas station for breakfast.  which turns out to be a choice between sausage, egg, cheese biscuit or sausage, egg, cheese burrito.  uhg.  i finished my tea off with a fried apple pie. what would my doctor say?

then it was off along the sullivan dam amd the upper columbia wildlife area.  a long, long dam.

the palouse to cascade  trail doesn't really exist in this spot, but we wouldn't have taken it anyway.  i admit to being over it.  but we have 150 miles to cover before idaho and much of it without water or food.  also with no place to sleep except in the open along the side of the trail.  the word is they do not maintain the trail on this side of the river.  considering the shape of the last 20 miles on the otherside....aarg.

15 miles gets us to the town of warden.  another 25 gets us to lind, where there is the wheat coffeehouse.  then........nothing.  for another 80 miles.  no water, no food, no campsites.

in warden, birdies on main is closed but the town & country market is open.  i buy an orange, dan buys more to drink.  and they let us refill our bottles.

warden is a pure agriculture town with storage for crops, processing plants, companies that perform irrigation and others that do chemical treatments, trucks to bring in farm prodce and trains (at least 3 tracks) to ship it out.  but only one restaurant (closed), one grocery store and a hardware store.

so we head to lind, 25 miles through wheat fields.  and some corn fields.  and a few soy bean fields mixed in.  one remarkable thing is the importance of irrigation to much of our nation's agriculture.  and here in eastern washington it can be so obvious, sometimes looking at two different sides of the road or seeing irrigated land abutting natural vegetation.

now, we who live in east tennessee are no strangers to hills, but in east washington they seem to take some perverse pleasure in running roads straight up hills, no attempt to use the grades.  up and down, up and down.  and after having ridden railroad grades for the last several days, i had forgotten we were even near hills.

lind proved to be a ghost town.  two blocks of closed up stores at the main street cross road, the 'coffeehouse' (which turned out to be a bar) being one.  the grocery store was open.  we got drinks, frozen lemonade, refilled waterbottles and rethought our plan.  20 miles away was the town of ritzville, an exit on i-90.  it has several restaurants, two hotels, and even a starbucks.  we decided that water was an issue and, since we were 'ahead of schedule', we decided to book a hotel room, clean up and get some extra rest.

it is truly astounding how many thousand and thousands of acres of farmland are out here.  and very, very few farm houses.

amber waves of grain.

so we headed 20 miles northeast to interstate 90, exit 221.  late breakfast at jake's cafe, where people were very friendly.  and there's nothing like 2 eggs over easy, a couple of fluffy pancakes and crispy bacon (i had to tell them that 'crispy' is a family thing.)  then not more than a mile to the hotel.  shower, wash clothes, catch up on blogging, then over to the mexican restaurant for beers.  there is no bar in this town, it closed last year.  turns out the restaurant is closed, too.  closed early for the 4th.  so we go to the take out option, grab a burrito at a fast food place, get a beer at the gas station and head back to the hotel for celebration.