Take the Long Way Home

There are two categories of travelers. The first category, to which my wife Julia belongs, believe that the best way to deal with the fact that you have a long (and possibly hot) drive ahead of you is to load the car with water bottles, books on tape, and meals and put your head down, pedal to the metal and NO STOPPING (except for gas) until you get to your destination. In an even more extreme version of this mode of traveling, a receptacle for urine known as a nenu jar can be used to avoid even otherwise necessary bathroom stops.

The benefits of this mode of travel are obvious -- you reach your destination quickly, are able to spend more time with the people you are going to visit and when you are on the road you have a clear sense of purpose and a solitary objective. Roughly 95% of the people I know are category 1 travelers.

The remaining 5% of us believe that life is a journey -- not a destination. We stop a fruit stands. If we are hot and are driving along a river, we pull off onto the shoulder, change into our swim suits and take a swim. If we want a snack (and we frequently do) we forego the Chevron at the rest stop for the donut shop on the old downtown business loop. We pull over to take pictures of a scenic overlooks. We scout campgrounds for future reference. We have lunch with the locals.

This past week, Julia flew back from Boise to go to girls camp and the three oldest boys stayed with the cousins in Emmet. Nigel and I could have driven home in about 10 hours up the interstate. Instead, we decided to go through McCall, along the salmon river, up White Bird pass and spend the night in Pullman. We had a very nice visit with Judy, Gillian and Jonathan and enjoyed seeing Wackerburg. I'm sure that it will be featured in some future publication -- very unique. I really liked it, but I do worry about how you will get the groceries up to the second story, since right now the only way up is a long spiral staircase.

Nigel and I then left Pullman for Bellingham via Wenatchee. We sang songs, talked about how things work and practiced our counting and ABCs. In Wenatchee we stopped to meet with a great local lawyer, Bob Parlette, whose fearless and tireless efforts resulted in a national class action settlement against Household Finance Corporation worth 484 million dollars for deceptive mortgage lending practices. Bob did not charge his clients a contingency fee and in the end was only paid for half of the time he put into the case. I have worked with him on one of my cases but had never met him, so Nigel and I stopped by and collected some documents. I thought I could keep Nigel quiet by giving him a lollipop, but in the end I had to go get several wet paper towels with which to wipe up Bob's desk.

We could have made it home in three hours, but we chose to head north and take the Cascade Loop through North Cascades National Park. We went through Chelan, and it was so hot and the water looked so cool and blue that we couldn't resist stopping for a swim. This brought back fond memories of our trip there with Brett and Alison when our kids were tiny.


We then headed north and passed through Twisp, Winthrop, and Marblemount stopping for some cold chicken and peaches and some cherries from a family cherry orchard. We again sang, talked and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. I was so busy taking a picture of the general store in Winthrop while driving that I took a wrong turn and several miles later we ended up in a camp which had been hastily set up for firefighters battling a forest fire in the mountains. Although the detour set us back in time, we discovered a beautiful valley which I hope to visit later with the family for a camping trip.



We wound our way down the pass. Nigel fell asleep as the sun went down and I admired the brilliant blue of Ross Lake, promising myself that we would return there someday soon. I reminisced about the last time I drove that road 8 years ago when Zach and Alex were very young and how I had also made the same resolution at that time -- life just flies by so fast.

We finally pulled into our driveway about 12 hours after we left Pullman. Pullman to Bellingham is usually a 6 hour drive. My only complaint was that it didn't last longer.