Brandon over on OlympiaFJ60.net has a piece on driving what he calls “Blue Highways” (the secondary highways on the maps), and specifically a loop he recently completed beginning and ending in Yakima and taking him along the Columbia River to Vantage, Ellensburg, and through the Yakima River canyon.
Read the entire trip report at Driving the Blue Highways - Yakima to Vantage to Ellensburg.
Enjoy.
After a nice peaceful night in a hotel in Ellensburg, Washington, we loaded up the Land Cruiser and headed out for a day trip to the Quilomene Wildlife Area. After topping off the fuel tank, we met up with the Northwest Backroads Drivers group for breakfast. Today, in addition to the participants from the previous days trip to the Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area (see Whiskey Dick Overland Tour), we were joined for breakfast by Bill and Ed, both of Ellensburg.
After a night of camping along the Yakima River, my daughter and I got up early, broke camp and headed to Ellensburg, Washington to meet up with the Northwest Backroad Drivers group to explore the Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area just east of Ellensburg.
After a stop for a quad iced americano and to top off the gas tank, we pulled into the Bar 14 Restaurant for the morning meet up. We were running a little late by time we arrived. Already eating breakfast were Rich (driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee), Jan and their 4 year old granddaughter Tara and Jerry our tour leader for the weekend (driving his Ford Bronco II).
Now that I have my eight year old daughter interested in photography, there is no way way that she’ll miss an opportunity for a road trip with her dad. Before her new interest in photography, it was agony on even the shortest trip, the typical “are we there yet” or “when are we going to get there?” of an eight year old. That has all changed since my wife and I let our daughter have our recently retired Sony Cybershot DSC-S30 1.3 megapixel digital camera (yes you heard it right, recently retired; replace by a Canon Powershot A550 and a soon to arrive Nikon D80 SLR).
This is a collection of outdoor photographs taken during the month of March 2007. Locations include the Puget Sound lowland forests, the upper White River, Crystal Mountain, Cle Elum Lake, Colockum, and the Columbia River near Vantage, Washington.
You can view them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/locked4low/
This past Saturday was a typical spring day in Western Washington - “Rain Turning to Showers”. Of course, if you never lived in Washington, you may be puzzled by such a forecast. I wanted to get out of the house and do something outside so I checked the statewide forecast for Washington. The coast was supposed to clear up that afternoon and Eastern Washington was going to mostly cloudy but only a 20 percent chance of rain. Sweet, over the Cascades we go.
With no real destination in mind, my son Steven and I loaded up the dog, camera gear and some basic emergency supplies (sleeping bag, tools, water, food, etc. in case the unexpected happens) in the Land Cruiser and left our home in Edgewood, Washington and headed east on I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass.