Diary for Harry and Judy's RV Trip


Day 30-To Spokane

2011-05-16

299 Miles today, 7 hours, from Randle, WA to Spokane, WA
Really cold last night, I had on 3 pairs of socks. It’s still too cloudy to see Mt. Ranier so we’re glad we decided to avert it. Very wet, rainy, damp, 40 degrees at 9am. Left campground and right away met another mountain to go up on Route 12, the White Pass Scenic Byway. White Pass is the only one of three passes that’s open to go over this mountain in the Cascade Range. The other two are still snow covered. At the summit, 4500 feet it was snowing and there was a mudslide they were pushing off the other side of the road from all the rain this week-end. Beautiful waterfalls because of the snow melt and the rain. Again, lots of black and white, a dream for Ansel Adams. There’s a raging river that’s following us all the way down the mountain, another 50+ miles. I can’t describe how spectacular the scenery is and the pictures don’t do it justice, either. Every time we turn a curve it’s more breathtaking than before. It’s stark wilderness in this forest, just gorgeous.
At the bottom is a little town called Natchez, cute little place, with lots of flowering trees and bushes, tons of lilacs and dogwoods. We then went through greener, smaller mountains with the snow covered peaks in the background. Natchez River is really swollen here, overflowing it’s banks and some of the homes on the river have flooded yards. Orchards here, apples, huckleberries, cherries, peaches.
From Natchez, we went to Yakima and then up to Ellensburg where we picked up Interstate 90 to Spokane. 200 miles of gently rolling hills with miles and miles of farms, potatoes (we’re close to Idaho), wheat, alfalfa, corn, hay, they have signs on the fences to tell you what they’re growing. I thought that was really considerate of them, seeing as how you never know what you’re seeing. We went through a little town called, get this, George, Washington!
Dark rain clouds all around us that finally caught up to us at a rest stop about an hour west of Spokane. Nice ladies at the rest stop with free coffee and cookies. It was 43 degrees, raining, windy raw and just like CT in Feb.
Hit traffic right outside of Spokane. Of course, it’s rush hour and they have the interstate down to one lane. Great campground, it’s a KOA, which are always nice. Still drizzling off and on and chilly, about 40 now. They say this is the wettest, coldest spring they’ve ever had. A lady at the visitor center yesterday said we missed their summer, it was the 2 nice days they had last week. The campground owner wanted to know if we brought it with us from Florida…NOT! But tomorrow’s supposed to be warmer (about 63) and sunny (we’ll see if North Washington sunny is the same as Florida’s sunny). We’re gonna stay here for at least 2 nights to relax. We’re only about 7 miles from Idaho.
And on our way in to Spokane we saw the snow covered Rocky Mountains looming in the east, which we’ll have to go over on our next leg.