Peaceful Palouse
Near Ewan, WA
Other than our chance encounter with the pretzel eating Pete, our journey along the backroads through the Palouse was quiet. Nevertheless, we made sure to get an early start to try and minimize any traffic we might encounter so Zilla could spend more time out of the trailer.
(click photos to enlarge and see descriptions)
We rolled through the hillside, making fairly good time as even though the road was a mix of dirt and gravel, it was well graded and maintained so that cars and farm equipment could make it to the various homes and fields around us. The quaint nature of where we were and the way life appeared to run around here gave a very romantic notion, though I’m sure the work is much harder than I could imagine and that the winters and winds our here could get quite fierce, but I didn’t let that reality ruin the moment.
As Zilla and I carried on, I noticed a large dog-like animal wandering down the road a few hundred yards ahead of us. I figured it was probably a coyote, so I put Zilla safely back into his trailer, securing him inside. Then as we started to get closer, it became apparent that it wasn’t a coyote at all but was a dog walking around in the middle of nowhere. The dog headed right for us and seemed to be a bit older, friendly and she had a collar on but no tags. She went over to the trailer to say hello to Dogzilla and they seemed to get on well enough so I decided to call her “Nice Old Lady”. After a few minutes of getting pet and hanging out, Nice Old Lady headed off into the hills in the direction of a farmhouse that was a quarter mile away or so. I’m guessing she goes on these adventures quite frequently out here but probably doesn’t see many dogs in bike trailers.
After our encounter with Nice Old Lady, the rest of the day was fairly unremarkable. The road stayed quiet and was devoid of any traffic, the few houses that we saw in the distance didn’t have any activity going on around them, and we didn’t see any more animals aside from the occasional bird. The only challenge of the day was a moderate hill climb over a few miles distance. Before starting the climb, Zilla and I took a short break and the clouds began to build. It didn’t look like a storm, but it definitely looked like we were going to lose the sun. Sure enough, before we started descending off the east side of the hill, the sun was gone and the clouds had taken over, making for a chillier ride.
We began the fun coast down and near the bottom, things seemed a little different, the grasses around us had given way to a few stands of trees! Not only that, but a short distance away, there was a creek too! We were closing in on a tiny collection of houses, Pine City, and I was sure excited to be treated to some forests again after our long crossing of the deserts of Washington. I was hopeful too that this change of scenery would help further my healing process after the loss of Captain. To help with this, I had a little something planned for when Zilla and I got home….
Near Pine City, WA
