Roadtrip

So, early Friday morning Freak & I gathered some stuff, tossed it in the car, filled the cat’s dishes full to overflowing & bailed.  Roadtrip!  It was exactly what we needed – no one on the road, stereo blasting as we sang along to everything, moon high in the sky & looking absolutely gorgeous…

 

Snoqualmie Pass is absolutely… something… in the moonlight. (They shoulda sent a poet.)  We stopped at one point – we’d passed the ski area, and had reached the bit where there was a giant lake on the right, and the clouds were covering the moon, but moving… we pulled over to climb up on the jersey barriers & step off into the 4 feet deep snow piled behind it to watch the lake… It was frozen over, with black trees & limbs sticking out of the dark grey water, and we watched the cloudbreaks moving across the sky, turning huge patches of the ice this silver blue as they passed. 

 

Stopped in Cle Elum in search of something to eat, & found this place called the Cottage Café – it was apparently a truckstop/restaurant that had been there for EVER – I think the menu quoted its opening date in the early 1900’s or something – and they were there 24 hours a day. (AND the local cops recommended it, so you KNOW it has to be good.)  And it was. We both had omelets & hashbrowns, and HOLY CHRIST they were good – real ham & eggs & green peppers & onions were harmed in the making of them, and the hash browns weren’t a gut-wrenching grease bomb – they were crispy, & cooked, & not saturated… And very reasonable as far as the price. We’re definitely going back next time we have a desperate need to spend some time driving to an insane place for breakfast.

 

After that, we carried on…. Coming down out of the mountains just as the sun was coming up, with the countryside all limned with light… Very cool.  There was a bit where we hit the cloud line – you could see it from the road, this sea of clouds – and it was REAL clouds, too, not just thick mist. Drove down into it, down onto the flat at the bottom, and we were in the clouds – yeah, it was a little bit foggy, but we were still on the ground, and the clouds were up in the sky. I was really impressed with that. On the island of Kauai, you had to get into a plane to go from one layer of atmosphere to another.

 

Got off I-90 at George. Freak had decided he wanted to visit the Gorge Amphitheatre. We got there & it was closed – yeah, makes sense, there wasn’t anything happening this weekend – so we parked by the gate & took off walking… problem was, the fog made it impossible to see any more than 10 feet in any direction, so we looked at all the grapevines on the side of the road & walked about 200 feet in before we gave up on finding the amphitheatre in the fog. Like, Come On. Yeah, its big, but when you can’t see it & there are no signs saying, “Trespassers go this way for the Gorge”? Not to mention the shotgun casings all over the ground next to the grapevines? Yeah, we gave up & walked back to the car.

 

After that, we drove around looking for the I-90 onramp. Found a transfer station (a.k.a. “dump”) with the most awesome sign posted… Apparently you can dispose of your Small Animals (pets) for $2.20 each. I’m telling the cats about that one next time they piss me off…  Finally found the freeway, & we’re on the road again.

 

Ended up trying to take a nap in the back of the car at the Winchester rest area… Didn’t work too well. We took off down the road again, & ended up in Ritzville around 9:30 am… Freak worked his magic & talked the lady at the desk of the motel into letting us have the “Small Town Extortion” rate – where we pay cash, & get the room for part of the day, & don’t have to pay full price. Sleep in a bed is a good thing….

 

Woke up, ate lunch, hit the road… ended up in Spokane around 6pm or so.  Tried to walk around Riverside Park, but it was bloody cold, and getting dark. So we went & saw a hockey game instead.

 

Hockey! Wow, I think I could actually get into that. I understand the concept – get the ball in the net by hitting it with sticks. Slam yourself into all the other Hulking Hockey players.  Fall down on the ice periodically. Great fun.  There was, of course, a fight – it was the Spokane Chiefs vs. the Ice (some Canadian team), and within the first few minutes 2 of the players were brawling – or trying to – it seemed more like they were dancing around with each other, doing that “I’m trying to hit you but we’re on ice skates here so I’m not letting go” wiggle, until one of them went down & the other started actually whaling on him… The funniest part was that 2 refs just STOOD there, watching, until they went down. THEN they separated the two players & sent them to the penalty box.  It SO smacked of staged brawling…

 

Ate dinner at this steak & burger place. I was unimpressed. It was really… mediocre.  Headed home… Freak crashed in the back of the car & I got to drive quietly to myself for quite a few hours… The sucky part was when we hit Snoqualmie on the way back – There was fog at the summit. And I mean FOG. Serious fog. Oh-Fuck-Where’s-The-Road fog.  And I was driving.  Scary. I was leaning forward in my seat, scared as fuck, keeping my eye on the 4 inches of lane markings I could actually see, trying to go slow enough not to catapult us off the side of the mountain because I lost the lane, telling Freak to just tell me if he saw me drifting out of our lane because I just wanted to have another set of eyes watching… Yeah, okay, so not THAT big a deal, but still. First time driving in that heavy of fog for me, and first time driving through Snoqualmie.  Not afraid of doing it again, but its still ranked rather low on my list of favorite things to do. 

 

Came sailing through Issaquah, Bellevue, Kirkland… then home again.. went to bed & slept for the next 12 hours straight. And the cats pinned us to the bed the entire time. (I think they’d been afraid they’d been abandoned…)