7. The Most Excellent Adventures of Two Old Prunes and One Cranky Cat

Chapter VII

Washington: We will drink no wine before its time and its time is NOW

Mile Marker: 3660. Toppenish, WA

Drinking potatoes was fun and still is but drinking wine is much better. All roads seem to lead to a winery.

We did discover that we like to buy it and drink it at home and skip the whole wine tasting bit. We played the tourist and oenophile at one winery

and, to tell you the truth, my nose got so tired sniffing the stuff and my brain could only come up with so many fruits to describe the aroma that it just became like work. We are retired for heaven’s sake! We just picked some wineries,

told them to we would skip the tasting and just sell us some wine. They were very happy to do so.

Toppenish is located right in the middle of the Washington wine country.

We are staying at the Yakima Nation RV Resort. It is right on the edge of the Yakima Indian Nation. They have teepees to rent if anyone is interested (some people were.)

This area is home to almost all the fruit orchards in America. We have never seen so many apple and cherry trees. They have apricots too but we couldn’t identify them by looking at trees. The cherries are at peak

and we are gorging ourselves silly on them – Rainiers, Bings and Bentons. Lovely orbs.

One of the weirdest and nicest things WA did was to take a 14 mile stretch of interstate that was bordered by farmland and label the crops on both sides of the road so you would know what was growing. We saw everything from corn to peppermint to alfalfa. Ray thought he was going to have to stop and interview a farmer to find out what was in each field.

Chapter VIII

North Cascades National Park: Where the mountain meets the road and the eagle flies.

Mile Marker: 3925. Rockport, WA

Well, we pulled into this little county campground that sits right on the Skagit River and a bald eagle flew overhead to greet us. It just doesn’t get much better.

The Skagit is a beautiful crystal blue/green body of water as is all the water in this area. There are lots of salmon in spawning season which attract huge numbers of bald eagles in the winter. That must be a sight to behold.

People who live here have bumper stickers that say “My town is gorges” for all the dams created to light the city of Seattle.

The dams created lakes which created smaller rivers which left deep gorges. Cute huh?

There is only one road that runs through Cascade NP and that is on the northern end. Washington Pass is its highest point and there was still snow on the ground. You would think we would be used to it by now. Lots of mountains and sweet smelling trees and wildflowers. The state of Washington labeled the mountains you can see from the highways so you don’t have to guess what you are looking at. That’s just sweet.