New Roads New Places Days 4 and 5

No blog last night due to us visiting old friends in Richland, WA.  We ended up yakking late into the night (well, at least until 10 pm). 

On our way to Richland we passed some wind turbines close to the highway with the access gate open, so we went in to take a look.  I knew these things were huge, but when you get really up-close and personal with one, it's kind of creepy..........like ET's ship landing:

Then we headed for Palouse Falls, but on the way we passed the namesake for Carolyn's favorite place:

One would think there would be a Starbucks there giving away free lattes, but no such luck.  In fact there wasn't much of anything in Starbuck. 

We have been to Palouse Falls before, but it's still worth another visit, and this time we wondered around the area a little more.  The falls are 198 feet high and were running at high capacity:

The down stream canyon is pretty impressive too:

As we walked along the edge of the canyon we noticed what looked like a trail on a ledge about halfway down.  I believe you can see it here on the left side (click on the picture to make it bigger):

We couldn't figure out how you would get to that trail, or who would have the guts to hike it. 

Then it was just acres and acres and acres of wheat in varying stages of ripeness: 

Eventually we reached Tom and Olga's house in Richland, but not before riding through some fairly significant rain.  At least it was warm rain, since we didn't bring any rain gear, but still, it's not supposed to rain in the desert. 

We first met Tom and Olga back in the early 70's.  Tom worked at the same place I did, and Olga was a Special Ed speech therapist which meant she had a lot in common with Carolyn.  Tom eventually quit in order to work on getting a doctorate degree in Statistics and then moved on to bigger and better things.  He ended up working at Battelle Labs near the Hanford Nuclear Site on some really interesting projects.  What we were unaware of was that both Tom and Olga had just retired within the last month.   A new life is ahead for them and we wish them well:

After a great dinner and breakfast and lots of catch-up talk, we said goodby to them and headed for home:

We had navigated to their house using the Zumo, and today I used it to navigate from their house to  Bickleton, which was on the route we wanted to take to get to Goldendale and then down to the Columbia gorge.  What I forgot to do, however, was check the box that said "avoid unpaved roads".  Suddenly we ran out of pavement and had no idea where we were:

Looking at the Zumo screen is like looking at a map through a keyhole.....it's hard to get the big picture.  So I broke out the map and tried to figure it out:

After about 8 miles of gravel road we got back on the pavement and headed for home.  There was a lot of wind in the gorge after we got past Lyle and it was stressful and tiring until we got past the Carson turnoff.  We finally got home around 5 pm, pretty tired puppys.  Total mileage for the ride was 1228.  It was a good, safe ride and the bike ran great.  It is now almost at 85,000 miles.  Carolyn, as usual, was a great co-rider and enjoyed the trip.