The Fred Meyer parking lot seemed a reasonable place to try and sleep, barring the discovery of some unknown rest area along Highway 2. It was well-lit, there were quite a few cars. All seemed well. So, I went to sleep.
And then I woke up. Again. And again. It wasn't noise or anything like that. There was just that creeping sense of the unfamiliar. No help at all was the fact that at about 1:00 am (after having awakened for perhaps the third time) all the parking lot lights had been turned off--in an effort to go green, I suspect, but also to save money.
So, creepy as it had become, I chose to stay. After all, I had nowhere else to go in the pitch black of the Wenatchee night.
Dawn came earlier than I would have thought, and I began my day at approximately 6:30. I started by taking some pictures of the surrounding area. The main interesting things was the bridge spanning the river.
Prepare for examples:
You may have noticed in the above pictures that the sky is mostly cloudy. When I was just outside of Bridgeport, the sky had begun to clear up a bit, and that's when I noticed the grooves in the center. I think they're the kind of grooves that are meant to keep the sleepy drivers from being sleeping drivers, but I didn't test them. In any event, due to some kind of recent precipitation, the grooves were each filled with still water. So, as I cruised past at roughly 60 miles per hour, the lines in the pavement blurred, but the reflection of the sky above remained almost unchanged, other than my perspective on it. Sure, occasionally the water levels wouldn't match causing a bit of blurriness, but overall, the effect was (nearly) mesmerizing.
The second thing I saw that I thought was neat was an old run down building.
In town, I stopped at a park along the river. The home neighboring had the kind of garden that I've liked for a long time. It's the kind of garden that at first looks kind of overgrown, but upon closer inspection, you realize that it probably takes a lot of effort to achieve that look.
Also, they had a couch in their yard. It didn't have any cushions, but they did have a yard couch.
Shortly thereafter, I stopped at a viewpoint over the Chief Joseph Dam, and here is my somewhat unconventional dam picture:
It could probably stand some cropping, but I like it well enough as-is.
It's weird, a lot of the pictures that I really like from (at least these first few days of) my trip have a really washed out look. That being said, here's another one that I think is pretty great:
A little farther east toward the Grand Coulee Dam, I had to stop again. I came across an area of the landscape that looked as though it had experienced a grass fire or something in the last few years. I pulled off to the side of the road onto sort of a steep drop-off. On a whim, I decided to see if I'd be able to drive out of it and get back to the road. The wheels were willing, but the traction just wasn't there. It suddenly became time to (off) road test the four wheel drive. The good news is: it worked. The bad news is that I didn't find any more hospitable looking places to pull off the road until I was out of that area.
Shortly thereafter, however, I did happen upon something else that was (perhaps) a bit better. Usually when you can see far into the distance, the weather is pretty clear. I had the unique opportunity to see far into the distance, but this time into the clouds. Looking across a flat landscape and being able to see the tops of clouds in the distance can be a bit disconcerting. At least, it was for me. Here, for your viewing enjoyment, is a 2 dimensional light-capture representation of what it was that I saw.
I passed through the town above the big dam, and I decided to stop for a meal at a restaurant called Pepper Jack's. I believe I had the Cowboy Chicken. It was quite good. The place's decor had a very (at least this is how I imagine it to have been) genuine 1960s feel. I liked it.
After that, I stopped at a viewpoint over the Grand Coulee Dam and found it largely uninteresting. I'd been there before, twice. I didn't feel any kind of need to stop and take the tour, or wait for nightfall and see the dam lightshow. The reflection of the bridge spanning the river below the dam, however, was of interest. In particular, the broken reflection it cast upon the waters' surface.
The next place I had in mind to stop at was the Dry Falls. On the way south I passed through Electric City (which I sincerely believe they should change the name to Electri City, but don't hold much hope of that ever happening).
Once on the road and a ways farther south, I encountered yet another one of those things that so fascinates me of late. The abandoned. This time it was an old store/restaurant/gas station/motel.
The following isn't my favorite picture of the scene, and I don't want to inundate you with too many of the same thing, but this one really sets the stage for the tale of how I felt about the whole place.
In the background to the left, you can see the edge of the building in the first picture. In the mid-ground, you can see the first and second (and a tiny bit of the third) motel cabins that have been boarded up. In the foreground... in the foreground is a blank sign of no particular importance. Or so it would seem.
The whole place was more or less heartbreaking to me. I knew that this was situated at the intersection of two fairly major (given the area) highways. Times are tough, I know, have been for a while. Something about seeing things like this just makes me miss the days I was never a part of. Makes me want to not partake of restaurants and hotels/motels that are part of chains longer than about three links. Something a long the road later on made me realize what it is about nationwide chains that keeps their position. Of course there was something about them in the beginning that helped them rise above their local competition and expand, but once they reach a certain point, the quality of their goods or services is no longer as important as proximity.
We are creatures of habit, for the most part, and we seek the familiar. I've recently taken up coffee as a casual habit, I think of it as renting space while I write in (mostly) peace, away from the distractions of home and work. That being said, Starbucks is hands down the winner in terms of proximity for me. And by virtue of that, I find them gaining my business most frequently. And such is the case on this last little journey around eastern Washington and Oregon. I'd want to stop and do some writing, or feel that I could use the caffeine to stay awake, and I'd find myself searching out Starbucks on my phone because I knew what they had that I wanted. Something in me thought, 'well, it's just coffee. how different can it be?' This would become one of the previously mentioned caveats to my 'no chains' rule.
I hadn't stopped for coffee that day at that point. This little aside is just to illustrate my point about how heartbreaking it felt to see a place like this, that could have been great in its heyday. And the irony of the above mentioned sign. The road facing side was blank, sure. But the backside, which presumably used to face the road, told a different story.
Now, maybe I'm reading far too much into this (which I'm no stranger to), but this says a lot about the character that the establishment must have had--the character that I could sense ghostly remnants of as I traversed the desolate grounds.
There was a certain irony in the following picture (last of the deserted motel series, I promise):
On my way back to the truck, I noticed that at least one of the deserted buildings, in this place that probably no one cares enough about any more to even want to tear down and build something new, had a tongue on it. It was a mobile. This place that cars could visit, where there were no longer any customers, where at least part of the structure was designed to move--would probably never move again.
And then I stopped at Dry Falls (huzzah!):
I thought this one was also good:
Farther down the road, I saw a sign for some caves. I still had my headlamp with me, so I figured what the heck? Why not? I grabbed the light and my camera and headed up the trail. The next thing of significance I found was this apparent stairway to nowhere:
Once I found the caves though, man, was I disappointed. The Ape Cave spoiled me. These were more like shallow spots hollowed out in rocky cliff-sides. Underwhelmed.
While it's true that there may have been other, actual caves up there, I only took the one trail and this is what I found. I decided against further investigation for the time being. Maybe another visit later, perhaps? These little adventures really bring home just how far away I can get in a day.
That being said, I decided to pretty much call it a day at that point. I hit up the Starbucks in Moses Lake (see what I'm talking about?), wrote for a while, used their internets and whatnot, then headed east on 90, on my ever decreasing fuel supply (more on that topic in the next day's entry).
Still not of a mind to pay for lodgings, I found the nearest rest area, and took many, many short naps in my truck for the rest of the evening and night. And morning.
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