Running from the rain

We left Seattle in the middle of a rain storm. “Well, duh” many of you might say. But this wasn’t just the typical misting Seattle rain. There was a lot more going on, and then off, and then back on again – all in the space of 2 miles (we’re on the road, remember). Which leads me to one of my favorite rants – tires that remove the water from beneath them and throw it up onto the windshield of the car next to them so that driver can’t see the road or the traffic in front of him. What are those tire engineers thinking? Or a better question – Are those tire engineers thinking? Sure the first car is safer – more rubber in contact with the road – but everyone behind or beside him is driving in fog and can’t see a bloody thing regardless of how much rubber they have on the road. OK, OK rant over.
The fall colors are just starting. The mountains are at the stage where the brush is turning glorious shades of yellow, red and everything in between yet all the evergreens are vibrant green. (It helped that the air was clean – see paragraph 1) It was a beautiful drive over the mountains. Even Eastern Washington was beautiful. When I was young and we lived in Spokane I thought the trip from Seattle to Spokane was, perhaps, the most boring trip in the world – dull, dull, dull with nothing to see. Fortunately as I have grown older my vision has changed and on this trip I was enthralled with the differing landscapes across my state. Mountains, scab lands (now with wind turbines), farms, rolling wheat ranches, pine forests. My internal vision has improved even as my external near vision gets worse.
We spent the night in Bonners Ferry Idaho in a B&B in a 1912 schoolhouse. At dusk we drove through the Koontnai WildLife Refuge. We saw two deer, a moose, a bunch or two of ducks and a large owl who had caught something in the road right in front of us and wasn’t about to give it up just to get out of our way.
Trip mammal count: 2 confirmed - deer, moose
1 possible – whatever the owl was eating