Road Trip Day 1 - Friday, May 23, 2003
Early start today - had breakfast at the Original Pancake House, which is quite possibly the best breakfast I've had in a very long time, not to mention HUGE. Ham & cheese omelette with corned beef hash, and enough of both to stifle a horse. Delicious.
We got right on the road from there, driving west from Portland along the Columbia River, through the Columbia River Gorge, which is - pardon the pun - gorgeous. Huge evergreen-lined cliffs, waterfalls everywhere (we stopped at Multnomah Falls, which is nothing short of spectacular). Once we were past the Cascade Mountains, we were in the plateau region of eastern Oregon and Washington - high desert full of juniper and sagebrush, irrigated to make prime farmland for things like potatoes and onions. We stopped for lunch in Umatilla, site of (believe it or not) the Unites States' cache of checmical weapons and other such niceties as land mines. WMD storage makes for a sweet picnic spot. (Actually, we had lunch in a nice riverfront park and fishing spot.)
After another few hundred miles of flat, arid farmland, we found ourselves in Spokane, home of Gonzaga University, a waterfall (or so I'm told - we didn't see it), and a bunch of strip malls. We checked into our hotel and then futzed around the local Guitar Center for about 2 hours (playing this beautiful maple acoustic guitar that had one of the smoothest sounds I've ever heard), had dinner at a rather subpar Perkins (the poor man's Eat'n'Park), and enjoyed the hotel pool, hot tub, and game room. No pool table, but they did have some classic old arcade games like NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat 2.
Tomorrow it's off to Yellowstone - a long day of driving.