The National Lentil Festival

Today the NLF is in Pullman. I'd never even heard of lentils till moving here, but apparently they're an important enough food item that they have their own national festival. We're at the parade now.

The White Pine Scenic Byway

Yesterday, Kara and I decided to go on another exploring trip to see what is around us. Since we had such a good time last week on one of Idaho's scenic byways, we decided to go on another one. The White Pine Scenic Byway would take us north out of Pullman, over into Idaho, and all the way up to Coeur d'Alene. We awoke early to some light drizzling rain, but were undeterred! We got together a little picnic lunch and loaded up the BJ Coleman cooler for the trip. After grabbing the camera, some warm clothes (it felt pretty cool out), and checking our route, we were off.

We started out driving through the endless wheat fields that are found around here, but quickly came to Kamiak Butte. It's a large uprising in the Palouse that has a park at the top of it. We discovered some good trails, and a great picnic and camp ground. We were very excited to find this place only minutes from our house! Best of all, it didn't appear to get too much use. We're pretty excited to go camp out there one night (after the state-wide burn ban is lifted...no campfires allowed right now).

After leaving the butte, we crossed over into Idaho to the little town of Potlatch. There wasn't much to see here, but it was home of the largest white pine lumber mill in the world. We did find a big interpretive board there and discovered that there's a 75 mile long bike path that follows an old Union Pacific railroad bed nearby. Much of it follows creeks and rivers...so we were pretty excited to find out about another close place to go ride our bikes. Right out of Potlatch, we came to Laird Park, a beautiful campground nestled in a few wooded peaks. There were several folks camping...it looks like they had gotten rained on in the night..but they all seemed to be having a great time. The smells of early morning campfires and breakfast filled the trees and the damp, cool air. It made me want to join somebody for some fireside food! After touring the grounds and checking out the lake nearby, we headed on. As we were leaving, these three cows in a roadside field looked up from their morning chew and just stared at me while I took their picture. One of them stuck his tongue out! It was hilarious.

The byway continued through the White Pine Drive in the St. Joe National Forest (for which the byway was named). It's the largest and oldest stand of white pine in America. The road was lined with huge pine trees. We came across a massive pine that had died and been cut down in a nearby campground. Another beast of a tree! I'm glad that the left the tree in the campground so you could still see it and climb around on it. Kara said you weren't supposed to do the latter, but I didn't see any signs. Of course, this tree didn't even come close to the monster cedar tree we saw last week.

One of the next "points of interest" along the byway was the Palouse Divide. We didn't really know what that was, but we wanted to go see it. We barely caught a hidden sign pointing us off the main highway up a mountain road and began a beautiful drive into the woods. The mile marker said 11 miles when we left the road. We started driving, but kept coming to splits in the road with no signage. We made a guess here, a guess there, but were really just driving. Finally (after about 8 miles) we came to a sign that pointed right! So we took it...but soon came to another split, one going up the hill, another traveling level on around the hill. We decided that a divide must be at a high point, so we took the high road. We drove and drove, and the road kept getting narrower and narrower, but we never came to the divide. We eventually came to another split and decided we should go back and continue our journey. We were at a very high point though, and had a beautiful vista. For it to be a "point of interest," they sure weren't interested in people finding it. Although, we did see some rare "Indian Pipe" plants that were beautiful. They weren't quite as nice as the ones Mark B and I found near Charlie's Bunion in the Smokies, however.

On the way back, we stopped to take some pictures of a creek below us and noticed a little road that drove down towards the creek. We took it and found a great picnic location right beside the water. Everything was wet, so we just backed the Highlander up to the water and ate out of the back. Instant picnic ground! While here, we also got to look at some beautiful Aspen groves. Did I mention that it was 48 degrees? Whoa!

After getting back on the road, we went through St. Marie's, a little town that has the distinction of having the highest (in altitude) navigable waterway, the St. Joe river. You can go all the way to the Pacific ocean across Idaho and Washington from there. The elementary school at St. Marie's has a giant statue of Paul Bunyan in their front yard! Tis a little bit creepy!! I wonder if the kindergartners are afraid of it? We left there to finish out the byway at Cataldo...a little town on I-90. The oldest building in Idaho stands there, a Jesuit mission that was built in 1853. It was very cool building, and what a location! The Jesuits had the most beautiful backyard! I can't imagine how peaceful it must have been there before a highway came through nearby. There was some type of Indian festival going on when we arrived, actually it was breaking up, but there were dressed Indians all around, trinkets for sale, and lots of people. We took some pictures and looked around, then headed for Spokane.

We stopped in Spokane for two reasons. First and most importantly, to go to Happy Hour at Sonic. Spokane is the closest Sonic to us now (about an hour or so away)...and Kara is going through massive withdrawals without her "slushies". So we stopped there first to get that out of the way. Second, we both need bicycle helmets. For her, it's not really an issue..we could get her one anywhere. Me on the other hand, well, I have what you'd call a fat head. Any of you that know me probably know that my noggin is very large. No one seems to carry helmets of extra proportions. Of course I know I can order one online, but I wanted to physically put on to see how it felt. I have a hard time with hats! At any rate, REI supposedly had a good selection of helmets that I could try on. So we stopped in there, and of course they didn't carry an of the XL models..."dude, we don't sell enough of those." Ok. SO, I called around to a few bike shops in town and found a place that had some XL models of a certain brand. We drove over and I tried one on and loved it, and I needed the XXL! Unfortunately, the only color the had was a very feminine Pearl. Not to worry though, now that I had tried one on, I ordered away from the internet (and saved a few bucks) for a black XXL model. A final stop at this super-sweet, brand new Wal-Mart to let Kara get a helmet and a case of Allen's Italian Cut green beans ended our day long adventure. A quick drive back down into the beautiful Palouse had us safely home for the day!

See pics here if you care to!

Look to the Skies Tonight!

Tonight and tomorrow are the peak nights for the Perseid meteor shower.  If you've got clear, dark sky, you should be able to see 50-60 meteors an hour tonight!!  Go outside tonight and look to the northeast...toward the constellation Perseus...and  you should see a show!  Check out more info here.

The Arcade Lives

For all those that have asked, yes the arcade machine made it with only cosmetic damage! It works great!

The Elk River Scenic Byway

Yesterday, Kara and I took a much needed break from getting the house in order to go do a little sight seeing. There are lots of places to go and see around us, but we wanted to do something close and easy because we are both so tired still from the move. So after doing a little online research, I found that the state of Idaho has all of their "scenic byways" on a webpage with a description of each. We decided to go on the Elk River one, mainly because I saw that the largest tree east of the Cascade range was along that route.

The drive was a beautiful one. We started out going down to Lewiston through the Palouse. We stopped for a few pictures of a funny fence made of all kinds of tractor wheels and gears. Before dropping down into the Lewiston valley, we stopped at the overlook for a few pics. We then cut over to where the byway starts in Orofino. After leaving that town, we started up into the mountains and soon came to the very large Dent suspension bridge over the Dworshak Reservoir. What a cool bridge out in the middle of nowhere! After crossing the bridge, we came to the end of the pavement and the road became gravel. After driving a while on the road, a young black bear walked out of the woods onto the road in front of us! He stopped, we stopped, Kara got a few pictures, and off he went into the woods on the other side of the road. Before the end of the day we would also see several deer, including a little family of deer.

We finally arrived at the village of Elk River and stopped for a little picnic along a creek. After enjoying our sandwiches and cold drinks (thanks to an awesome refrigerated cooler provided by one Brian Jones), we went on in to the middle of the village (this place has a population of like 70) to get some ice cream at the lodge. Elk River is a camping/recreation destination. The Clearwater National Forest bumps against it where there is lots of camping/fishing going on. The place has a grass air strip where the Forest Service lands daily while out looking for fires. The ice cream gal told us a guy owns a cabin there and flies in on the weekends from somewhere.

The other attraction is the Morris Cedar Grove. In it grows the largest tree in North America east of the Cascades. Of course the largest trees are the Sequoias and Redwoods in California on the other side of the Cascades. This tree, a western red cedar, is 177 ft tall, 18 ft in diameter and approximately 3,000 years old! Wow! The grove was extremely quiet...we were the only people there and all you could hear was the quiet gurgle of a little stream of water that flows into the base of the tree (part of why it's so big). It was a magical place, and I think we will go back there with visitors.

The last thing we saw were the Elk River falls. Its a series of three waterfalls the river takes as it cuts through the area. We saw the upper and middle falls, but didn't hike down to the lower falls because it was starting to get dark and we didn't want to get caught in the woods after dark. Next time! We finished the day at a local Mexican restaurant that wasn't so good...El Taps in Sparta has it beat.

If you want to check out some pictures from the trip, click here!

More Cleaning, More Moving Boxes

I hope I don't see another moving box for a long time! It's taken a lot of energy to move all these boxes around, more energy to open them and get the stuff out, and then more to get rid of them! Boxes pile up by the back door...they disappear to the dumpster...then they magically reappear!

I think though, that we've made it to the bottom of the boxes...there are only a few more to go through. Today we got two more rooms organized in apartment...the office and the guest room (we're now taking reservations for the fall). It's nice to have a computer set back up and having music in the house again. We've been listening to a lot of music through my phone, but now we actually have speakers in the house. It is sounding nice. We also ate all three meals in the apartment today! Yippee! I'm so sick of eating out, ugh. We just finished supper and are getting ready to get back to work. We have a few finishing touches on the rooms we've worked on (Kara the guest room, me the office).

Tomorrow we're visiting another little church...this time in Moscow...Trinity Baptist Church. We've been to a church here in Pullman that we were pretty happy with, but we'd like to try out the one in Moscow before we make up our minds. Hopefully it will be a good service and we'll have the hard decision on which church to go to. I know that God will make it clear to us. Hopefully tomorrow. :)

I'm writing on this new "Blogger in Draft"...Google is finally updating their blogging service. Apparently it can do lots of new things...although I don't know what they are yet. Looks like I can type in different fonts, although I think I could do this in the old version. Apparently I can change the colors too...although, I think I could do that in the old version as well. What about changing the size...not sure if I could do that in the old version...at least not easily. Well I like this new blogger in draft. I guess.

Whirlwind Travel Up and Down the State

Yesterday was a good day for traveling!  It was a beautiful, sunny, big white cloud day.  We got up early yesterday to travel to Lewiston, ID, a little town just down the road.  They have a Home Depot and lots of other fun places.  Our goal was to find an air conditioner of some type for the apartment, whether it be window or portable.  Our apartment has no AC, lots of places here don't, and it has been in the 90s since we arrived.  In an apartment with lots of windows, it gets to be a very uncomfortable box about two in the afternoon.  By six pm, it's unbearable and you're thinking irrational thoughts, like "I'll buy a central air unit and sit it outside this window with a tube blowing in the house!" The problem here is, according to some people we've talked to, it could be hot for the next two months...or it could turn to Fall the first week of September, you just never know. So, do you sit it out and lose 30 pounds from sweating, not wanting to be in your own home?  Or do you get an AC unit.  We decided we had to get something or we wouldn't even want to be in the apartment until after 9pm every night.

The air conditioner hunt was a little harder than I expected.  I would have never guessed finding one would be as difficult as it was.  When we arrived to Home Depot, they informed us that they didn't have any more air conditioners because they had sent them all to California a month ago. What?  Why?  Well, aparently, it wasn't hot here, they weren't selling, and California was hot.  The clerk told us that they were all out the back door "before it got hot here"...and I was like, doesn't that happen every summer?  Isn't that why you sell air conditioners, because it gets hot in the summer?  Anyway, we left Home Depot with no AC.  We had been looking on Craigslist as well, but everything that would work for us had already sold.  We decided to check Sears and they had window and portable units!  But my oh my what a cost!  So we hummed and hawed, and about decided to pluck down some money because again, we were miserably hot and couldn't hardly function in the apartment we'll be living in for the forseeable future.

We decided to go eat some lunch before spending a ton of money...at least we'd feel good before we blew some cash.  I decided to check Craigslist one more time over my delicious Jack in the Box hamburger.  To my surprise, a new posting had popped up in the last hour in Spokane for a portable AC unit, very similar to the unit we were about to go buy at Sears, only it was $300 less! Kara quickly called the number (thank goodness there was a phone number and not an email address!) and talked to the girl on the other end.  She had just posted the ad and had the AC still for sale.  We talked for a bit with her about it, she told us it had no problems, worked great.  I said I'll be there in an hour (I even talked her down an additional $25).

I drove up to Spokane, nabbed the unit, brought it up the stairs (I nearly died doing that...it weighed a ton) and started working on getting the exhaust tubing out the window.  Once it was turned on, nothing but hot air was blowing out.  I was like WHAT!!??  As I stood their sweating and trying to come up with a Brian Jones chinese word, I heard the beautiful sound of the compressor kick on in the bottom of the unit.  There was music in the air I'm sure as cold air started billowing forth.  What a relief!!  Well, it worked like a charm last night.  It cooled our bedroom down immediately and made the back of the apartment cooler.  We are excited to see how it does today.

Today we're going to get to the organizing in earnest.  Kara has already gotten our bedroom and the two bathrooms back to their normal look.  The living room, dining room, and kitchen are today's tasks.  She is looking at me right now like "that is enough blogging, come help me" so I will go for now.

My fortune

How appropriate for two unemployed people.

Move in Complete

The movers have laid waste to our once empty apartment. I was beginning to get scared that we would run out of room to put boxes!
But, we started unpacking and realized thar the bulk of the problem was boxes and packaging. We emptied over half the boxes and threw out all the wrapping paper before the movers left so they could take it away.

We are now sitting at the Golden Teriyaki restaurant to sample the General Tso's chicken…a Kara dietary staple. We are both dehydrated, starving, and sleep deprived but I think tonight will be the best sleep since we were in Gatlinburg weeks ago!

Insanity

Help!






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