At last...journey's end

After a long 3 day drive from Denver, I pulled in to daughter Juli's around 11 am yesterday morning.  We had tea and conversation, Echo frightened their cat into crawling inside the couch from an underneath hole in the lining. I left around 1:30 so Juli could sleep and the cat could hopefully extricate herself from the springs and innards of the furniture, without them having to cut it apart.  Another hour's drive and I was at my brother's house in Olympia.

The last 1400 miles are a bit of a blur.  Wyoming was long and desolate, haunting in its empty beauty.  I saw a herd of antelope running along the fence line.  I saw a gigantic bald eagle, perched on a guardrail, just looking at the ground, presumably searching for lunch.

Montana, all 555 miles of it that I traveled, was drop-dead gorgeous.  To see those mountains coming up right out of the prairie, always makes me wonder what people from the gentle East thought when they first encountered this wild and rough scenery.  It is so different than anything they would be familiar with, so majestic and yes, frightening with dramatic stark power--well, it must have been like stepping onto an alien planet. I spent the night in Billings, and crossed the Continental Divide the next morning at Butte.

I had my own little fright, caught in a genuine snowstorm in the pass between Montana and Idaho.  There was nowhere to stop, nowhere to pull off and wait it out (and the thought that I might very well have to wait until Spring!), so I just took it down to 30-40 mph, and slogged through, pressing for the summit and the descent on the other side that would turn the precipitation back to rain instead of snow.  Once through the panhandle of Idaho, I crossed into Washington and spent the night on the west side of Spokane.

Yesterday's drive was easy, just 300 miles across eastern Washington, passing through dessert, over the Columbia River Gorge, through farmland (potatoes & hay) and then crossing the Cascades at Snoqualamie Pass for the final push into Seattle.

I'll try to upload more "America Through My Windshield" pictures when I figure out how to do it on my brother's Mac.

It is good to be here.  I have a cramped hand (steering wheel grip-itis), a sore back (from sitting in the driver's seat for 6 days) and a big pile of dirty laundry.  

America is really, really BIG.