Wilderness Wandering

August 20, 2024

We left North Cascades and drove about 4 hours to Yakima, WA. We stopped in Yakima and did a wine flight at Kana Winery.  We sampled some wonderful wines.  We had dinner at Sumo. The teriyaki salmon was fantastic! We stayed at a rest stop nearby over night. It was decent, but lots of road noise. 

August 21, 2024

We got up and drove to Cowiche Canyon and did a pretty 5 mile out and back walk there. The geology was very interesting.  

Next we drove about 4 hours to Pullman, WA and toured the campus of Washington State University.

We were astonished by all the winter wheat being grown in eastern Washington and western Idaho. I thought Idaho was mostly potatoes, but apparently that is the very southern part of the state.  

We went to the popular campus bar for a cocktail before heading 30 minutes east and crossing into Idaho and onward to our BLM campground for the night. 

McKay’s Bend campground is worthy of awards! Nice sites, not too close together with electricity and water at each campsite as well as immaculate bathrooms and free showers. Oh, it’s also along the beautiful Clearwater River that we learned Lewis and Clark traveled.  {not while we were there ;)}

August 22, 2024

We loved our campsite so much and slept so well, we decided we wanted to stay there again the next night.  

Tim and I had both recently read books about Indigenous people. 

Tim read the NF book Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne and I read the fiction book Blood Into Rubies by WI author., Deborah Hufford.  Tim’s book was mostly about the rise and fall of The Comanche people.  My book was about The Nez Perce and the development of the West.  I realized we were near Nez Perce country when we were at Yellowstone, but we had a schedule to keep.

On this end of the trip, we had some time to spare before we were meeting up with friends. So we decided to visit the Nez Perce National Historical Park near Lewiston, ID. While not one of the 63 National Parks, it is a National Park unit. Additionally, when I was on the NP website looking at their hours, I noticed they offered a behind the scenes tour on Thursdays, and we were going to be there Thursday, so I called and made us a reservation for the tour. We arrived about 10 AM and watched the film and toured the recently renovated and updated museum. We were very impressed with how well done it was. Since it is a National Park unit, we did stamp the passport.

At 11:00 AM, Kristine,  the museum curator, came and brought us down to the vaults. She asked if there was a particular area of interest, and I said beaded items. She opened drawer after drawer of beautiful elk skin and deer skin dresses, and moccasins and leggings and gauntlets. One beautiful dress was at least 120 years old with wonderful glass trade beads in blue and green. Apparently blue beads were the most popular and green were relatively rare. After the clothing, we moved on to toys, dolls, drums, cradle boards, fabulous woven baskets, saddles, and feathered heads dresses. We had a wonderful time exploring the artifacts! 

After our museum tour, we drove up to Moscow, ID to tour the campus of The University of Idaho. It has about 10,000 students. They are the Idaho Vandals.  We loved the campus. The town of Moscow is 25,000 people without the university. We were extremely impressed with the school spirit of the city. More than 50% of the businesses displayed the Vandals logo. We sampled some delicious ice cream and did a little laundry while we were there. Back to our sweet BLM campground for the night. 

August 23, 2024

We drove a very scenic route along Hwy 12 to 

The Buffalo Eddy Petroglyphs. There are more than 100 petroglyphs made by The Nez Perce on rocks about 15 miles south of Lewiston along the Snake River.  Unlike most other petroglyphs, there is no barrier around them.  We were able to get right up close to study them, which was a very cool experience. 

We soaked in the beautiful scenery on the way back. We figured out that one side of the river was Idaho and the other sides of the river is Washington. And the cities on each side were Lewiston, ID and Clarkston, WA for Lewis and Clark. We had a little more time to kill so we visited a well done exhibit about Lewis and Clark at Hell’s Canyon State Park. 

Finally, it was time to return to Moscow to meet up with our friends, Mark and Maia Grosza,  that moved from NIU to U of I to teach. We met Maia at the University Golf Course and she gave us a great tour of campus. She was recently promoted to Associate Dean!

The Kibbie Dome is where University of Idaho plays football. It is one of only a handful of  Indoor college football stadiums.  Then we toured the school of business and Tim was offered a job. When Tim asked if he should take the job, I quickly responded that I’ll be very happy to visit him in ID. 

We went out for pizza with Mark, Maia and their three amazing kids. It was a really fun visit! 

It was the first time in Idaho for both of us. We learned so much about Idaho, and it is gorgeous!