Singing in the Rain

Day 4 – Yakima to Spokane

Yesterday we traveled from Yakima to Spokane in the beautiful state of Washington. Much of the terrain looks like our home, the Carson Valley, with vast fields of green carpeting the valleys and sage-covered rolling hills ringing the fields. In other valleys, ones where cover crops like wheat (or maybe hay) had been grown this past summer, a short-cropped golden carpet flowed away to the horizon interrupted only by the lazy patterns carved by a myriad of farm machinery wheels in the stubble making it look as if someone had been more interested in art than in farming. Quite a beautiful sight. To heighten our experience, the sky as we headed eastward, billowed with rain clouds and bristled with the occasional lightening strike; an awesome and magnificent vista. Only later, as we neared the end of our drive, did the skies open up with their long-promised rain and envelop the landscape.

Concetta had navigated us to a KOA in Spokane that we truly hoped would have some vacant spots since it was the only one that the AAA guide had recommended. When we at last arrived and discovered that the camp did indeed have a number of open spaces, the check-in clerk asked me what sort of space I’d like. “One where it’s not raining,” I said, for by then it was raining like mother nature had to get a month’s supply on the ground so she could go on vacation. Fortunately, I was able to get the electric and water hooked up and get myself back inside before I needed to be rung out like a sponge.

The day started out with us looking for two things: one, the Yakima Trolley museum; and two, a Ford dealer so I could discuss my “Check Engine” warning on the dash. We wandered around for some time finding neither when I suggested to Concetta that we feed a fictitious address into the GPS for the trolley museum since the guidebook was kind enough to offer none. Miraculously, the fictitious address turned out to be almost exactly correct and we were soon at the front door – only to discover that it was closed. Sigh. Oh well, on to the Ford dealer which I assumed would be on the main street of town just like the Chevrolet dealer we had already seen. Unfortunately, locating the dealer was not to be and before long we found ourselves back in the vicinity of the freeway on-ramp that we needed for our journey north. Promising to check the next town for the sought-after dealer, we headed for the town of Ellensburg hoping to have better luck.

Ellensburg was where we stopped for coffee yesterday morning to post the previous blog. McDonalds has easy-to-use WiFi and surprisingly good coffee. I usually have the blog roughed out in Word Perfect (yes I own Microsoft Word, but consider it to be an inferior product) and just have to upload to the web. As you may or may not know, I bought a remote uplink device for this trip sponsored by Virgin Mobile/AT&T. But as yet I have not been able to connect with it. The device will talk happily with the mother ship at Virgin. I even downloaded the manual in PDF format this evening. But when I try to get to Google or AOL it simply tells me that it has timed out. No other explanation. Not sure how to outwit it, but for now McDonalds is my savior.

Anyway, after blogging and drinking our coffee we headed for the neighborhood Ford dealer using instructions offered by the girl serving our coffee. And her directions turned out to be spot on. Moments later we were pulling up in front of the service entrance to Ford and serendipitously caught two service employees smoking outside on the sidewalk. I jumped out and approached them with my problem. “Do you want me to pull it into the service area?” I asked.

“Nah,” the older of the two said. “We can check it out right where it sits.”

And that’s just what they did. Ten seconds later one of the chaps emerged from the building with a tester of some sort. Maybe a minute after that he’d hooked the device up to some place under the dash, run the test, and ambled over to tell me that his tester indicated the problem was with the emissions system. “Probably just a leaking vacuum hose. Plastic you know,” he said. “You probably don’t need to worry about it and can just track it down when you get back home.”

Now how is that for fortuitousness? I thanked them, hopped back in the truck, and was on my way in less time than it took to type this blog entry. I was stoked to say the least.

For most of the trip from Ellensburg to Spokane we shunned the interstate and traveled the back roads of America, just like the American Pickers. I didn’t dare suggest to Concetta that I while away the afternoon rummaging through any of the two dozen antique shops we passed, but it was fun to think about it. We don’t really have any room to bring antiques along with us anyway. Still, I’m going to pick one out one of these fine afternoons on some little-traveled country road and bring home some treasure. I promise.