OLD WALLA

One thing we’ve noticed about smaller communities nearly everywhere we’ve traveled is that they have invested heavily in public parks that put most larger cities to shame.  Walla Walla has a beautiful park adjacent to our RV park.  it has something for everyone, including a BMX track for bike racers, skateboard bowl, a radio-controlled off-road model car track, and a very cool model airplane airport, complete with runway and taxiways.

There’s also a WWI Veterans cemetery, huge open grass areas, covered picnic shelters, ball fields, and a very nice museum.

Walla Walla was on the Oregon trail route, so there’s quite a pioneer history, both of the immigrants as well as of the farming in the area.  There were dozens of old tractors, plowing and harvest machines, buggies, etc.  Below is a barrel-stave water wagon and an American-LaFrance horse-drawn steam pumper.  They must have cornered the market on fiberglass equines.  That’s a 33 mule team, connected by an ingenious “equalizing Schandoney hitch” that allowed each one to pull an equal weight.  Here they’re hauling a huge combine. There was an excellent display of old quilts, some dating from the mid-1800’s that were amazingly well preserved.  They looked almost new.  We couldn’t photograph the one we thought the most beautiful, because it was virtually white-on-white, but with over 350,000 stitches!  The detail was incredible.

The also had the requisite pioneer village with local original buildings relocated to this site

which was ok, but we’ve seen better down in Texas.  I did think the barber shop was interesting, including what’s reputed to be the oldest barber chair in the Northwest (be still my heart), dating from 1870 and used here in WW in Clifford’s barber shop on Alder Street.

Our park, the very nice Four Seasons RV Resort (although “resort” is a bit of hyperbole), seems to have taken a cue from the museum and invested heavily in fiberglass critters, which are everywhere.  Besides these examples (don’t miss the dino peeking from behind the sign), there were various zoo animals and the ever-popular giant rooster, all over the place.  Truly bizarre.

However, this park is the first one we’ve encountered that permits washing your rig, albeit only in a designated location.  Since the clouds lifted for a while, we decided to get the road grime off of Albatross before heading out tomorrow.  I didn’t bring our broom-handle brush, so it was sponges and hand mitts.  The first step is the roof, to get all the settled dirt off so it won’t streak down in the next rain, then the sides.  This is a large PITA, trust me.

Of course, after drying everything off, it rained about two hours later.  But at least no dirt streaks! 

We left Walla Walla Friday morning, but had to restock the groceries.  Our last stop, I think it was Oxbow, we had to use a Safeway.  We both thought that one ranked in the bottom 5% of grocery stores we’ve used in our travels.  Crummy produce, poor selections, and a generally depressing aura.  Now, that was a very small community, but still.  Safeway should shut it down or replace the manager.  We vowed to avoid Safeways if we could for the rest of the trip.  So, we chose a local non-chain, and wow!  What a find.  This has to be the best supermarket, bar none, we’ve ever been in, including those fancy bandits in our home town.

Everything that was wrong about the Safeway was right here.  Incredible selections of everything, from beautiful produce (including a wild assortment of fresh chilies) to a beer assortment to die for.  Lots of regional craft brews.  We bought a selection of them in 22oz bottles to split.  They also had a bakery that actually produced first-rate sticky buns (and everything else looked good, too), so a couple of those went in the basket for a late brunch.  We heaped praise on the check clerk who said she’d pass it on to the manager.  Nice to see an independent that is thriving and, apparently, killing the competition.

From Walla, we headed northwest back into the mountains.  Traveling on WA240, we passed by 34 miles of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the largest nuclear waste dump in the Western hemisphere.  We didn’t see anything glowing, but there sure was a lot of nothing.  It’s off to the right in the photo below.  We crossed the Columbia again at this bridge, near Vantage, and linked up with I-90 for a ways before starting the climb on WA97 towards Leavenworth.  Not the prison.  The faux-Bavarian shopper’s paradise at the edge of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.  We also caught a bit of Fall color change along the way

before getting to the Blu-Shastin RV Resort, where we have fine WiFi to post this report.  It’s Friday nite, and this is Octoberfest in Leavenworth.  You’ll have to wait ‘til we sober up for the next installment.