Washington - Day 29 - Pullman, down to Clarkston

Hells Canyon RV Resort, Clarkston
Wednesday, 29 June 2022

today's route

It might be a little hard to tell from the photo, but from Moses Lake we went mostly south to Othello and then turned due east, heading as directly as possible toward Pullman.  I wanted to visit the town because it has the main campus of Washington State University, so I'd heard about Pullman for almost all the time I lived here.

Although the road to Othello was part of my drive 2 days ago from Tri-cities, I still saw things I hadn't seen before.

For instance, I saw something advertising the Wenatchee AppleSox baseball team.  I'd somehow missed that when I'd been in the Wenatchee area and, with a name like that, I had to look them up.  It formed in 2000 and is an amateur team that plays in a league that fields college baseball players, only these teams have no affiliation with any school and only play in the summer.  It sounds like they're minor league teams that aren't professionals.  I've always enjoyed minor league baseball - it's a lot more entertaining than the big leagues, in my opinion - so I'd probably enjoy the AppleSox games.

I saw a sign for Potholes State Park and wondered if Washington has potholes like I saw in North Dakota and other northern states.  And it turns out Washington does have them, except not in Potholes State Park, which is very confusing.  The state park is around Potholes Reservoir, which also has nothing to do with natural potholes - those leftovers from the glacier age.  The ones WA has are about 30 miles outside the park, are really hard to find information about in a search, and don't seem to be protected by any government.  

As I drove across eastern WA, I passed crops and cows.  Those crops included asparagus and cherries (according to a sign), corn and potatoes (according to what I recognized in the fields).

I saw an unusual square building that was small enough to be a silo though it looked like a 3-story barn: very small, wooden, square and at least 3 stories tall.

I saw a critter that, for some reason, I thought was a wolf.  And there are wolves in WA, but there are far more coyotes so the chances are that's what it was.  It was trotting across an open field.

And on the radio, I heard that the state government is deliberately killing wolves, exterminating an entire pack in eastern WA, because they've been attacking people's cattle.  Dept. of Fish & Wildlife says they'd love to stop killing wolves but "there are people whose livelihoods are impacted."

In an unrelated note, I also heard on the radio that there'd been a wildfire in the Soap Lake area yesterday - still burning today, actually - and that people were being evacuated from their homes.

I passed many acres of grain fields and a sign on 2 large storage silos that read WA Grain Growers.

And in the middle of the grain fields I came to the tiny town (217 residents) of Washtucna, named for Washtucna Lake which was named for a Palouse Native American chief.  A sign a little farther along the road told me I was on Palouse Scenic Byway, and that Whitman County (which I was now in) was the "Nation's Leading Wheat-Producing County."

I saw a wild turkey by the road.  Haven't seen one in a while.

The public radio station I was picking up here said it's broadcasting from the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University.  I was curious and looked it up and learned that, in fact, Edward R. Murrow, famed early radio broadcaster, is one of WSU's most well-known graduates.  Murrow is the one who was known for helping bring down Joe McCarthy with his TV program See It Now.  He was clearly a man who was on time for his moment in history, as you can tell just from the snippets in his Wikipedia article.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Edward-R-Murrow

I saw a sign for the town of Dusty, which isn't incorporated and is hardly a town.  Per Wikipedia in an unattributed comment: "Various reports put the population of this tiny hamlet at either 11 or 12 people and 2 horses (+/- a horse)."  However, it's big enough to have a grain elevator that's labeled "Dusty Elevator - Lacrosse Grain Growers."

That grain includes canola and massive fields of wheat (apparently).  As I drove I saw the wind blowing across the grain, revealing pale grain heads as they swayed, looking soft and silky.

I came to the Palouse Empire Fairgrounds, which hosts the Whitman County Fair each September in Colfax, pop. 2,830.  I saw a building that dated to 1893, and the whole downtown was full of old buildings.  A little research told me it's actually a lot older than 1893: the area was first settled by European-Americans in the 1870s, and the town that was started here was called Belleville, for the girlfriend of one of the founders.  When he switched girlfriends, he changed the town's name to Colfax, who was vice president under Pres. Grant.

I passed a mechanic shop with the sign, "Satisfaction guaranteed or your dent back."

I've been seeing "help wanted" signs all over the state, and Colfax is no exception.

It was less than 20 miles to Pullman, pop. 34,560, elev. 2,352'.  I was aiming for a park as our first stop, figuring Dext could use a break.  Reaney Park is next door to WSU and wasn't as big in real life as it looked on the map.  It had a lot of activities packed into an oddly shaped 1-block chunk of land.  But the chunk included lots of grass and big old trees and parents keeping an eye on their little kids on the playground and in the swimming pool.  Dext and I negotiated a route through all this, with some little kids being scared of him and others wanting to pat him.  It's really much easier on my nerves to be doing this with only one dog, and Dext may be getting more attention now that he's not being overshadowed by Gracie, who was more conventionally attractive.

What Reaney Park didn't have was much parking.  It took me several minutes to maneuver us into a parking place, but we got one in the shade of some of those old trees, so we stayed and had lunch there.  From there I drove through some of the WSU campus (very attractive) and on to the local IGA.  I found when I got there that the store was closing its doors permanently, and of course they weren't replenishing their stock.  It was an odd experience trying to find anything I wanted when most of the shelves were empty (I felt like I was in Soviet-era Leningrad) and of course there was no produce or dairy or any meat that wasn't frozen.

As I drove out of town I passed the bigger, fancier store that probably took all the old-time-family IGA business away.  In relative terms, Pullman's not a big city - it's not even in WA's top 10 - but for this area, it's a thriving community.  The university itself has 28,000+ enrolled and ranks behind only University of Washington in Seattle in student population.  It's an old rivalry, by the way.  When the schools play each other each year, it's called the Apple Cup and the state totters a bit until the contest is resolved for that year.

On my outward route I found the local recycling center which let me dump a lot of what was in my bathroom, including the glass, so that was good.

From Pullman, I insisted Google route me on what I thought would be a more scenic road than the fastest one - running along the Snake River.  The road from the recycling center led me for 17 miles first on the Old Wawawai Road, and then on the Wawawai Grade Road down to the Wawawai County Park by the river.  

I thought those names couldn't possibly by right, but I learned from signs at the park that they are.  That "grade" road, by the way, is so named because it runs down steeply, losing about 1,600' in elevation in those 17 miles.  And of course the road was a curvy, hilly road, but luckily there wasn't much traffic.

The park seemed very out-of-the-way to me, but there were several groups of people down there, setting off on hikes, camping or just fishing and swimming in a little side pocket of water from the river.

The water you can see through the
bridge supports is the Snake River.

I found a couple of signs explaining the area.

Wa-wa-wa = Talk, talk, talk
People never change.

Lewis & Clark were through here -
details enlarged below.

I'll warn you here not to read these signs if you're disturbed by this fact: the men of the Expedition didn't think much of salmon as a protein source and were happy to eat dogs instead.

Over the years, I've heard disparaging comments made about foreign cultures that supposedly eat dog meat.  I'll bet those same disparagers extol the virtues of the explorers on this Expedition.  

And lastly, I found this sign about the area's wetlands that included information I didn't know.

Just as a bonus, I have a "where's Waldo?" puzzle for you.

Somewhere in this photo is a walking-stick kind of insect.
I noticed him accidentally at the time,
but I haven't been able to find him in this photo,
though I'm sure he's there somewhere.

From here we drove off along the Snake River - another 16 miles or so down to Clarkston.

There was little traffic on the road, though I saw many folks camping along the side in what looked like designated camping areas - though they were all boondocking.  I think it's the fishing that draws them.

Coming our way I saw a school bus with a Dalmatian poking its head out of a window.

The road came to a T intersection that Google didn't mention, and the signs didn't give me a clue which way I should turn.  I chose to keep following the river, which turned out to be the right choice.

Near Clarkston, I passed a huge staging yard for logs.

I found the campground easily, I got good directions to a grocery store from the woman at the office, I went into town for groceries (since the Pullman IGA didn't have them) and then, not finding anywhere to walk Dext, I came back to our site for the next 2 nights.