The Bad and the Good in Rawlins, Wyoming
“Reservations?” the desk clerk snapped at us as we walked in, and almost speechless, we said ‘no’ and he machine gunned “the-rooms-are-one-twenty-nine-a-night-plus-tax.”
No smile. No welcome.
We mentioned we are seniors, military, AAA and lots of other things and he sighed and said the lowest rate was $125.
There isn’t a lot to choose from in Rawlins, Wyoming, and Laramie is another hour and a half down the road. We agree to take the room, but we are appalled at the clerk, and his idea of “Welcome” to the Hampton Inn, part of the Hilton Hotel Family. We are particularly astonished because we have had great experiences in other Hilton Hotels, and we have friends who swear by the Hampton Inn.
Our room is nice, but . . . somebody has smoked in this room. The pillows reek, the linens reek and the bathroom reeks, while the hotel appears brand new.
We had seen a sign for a barbecue restaurant, so we asked the clerk how to get there and he wrinkled his nose, waved his hands in front of him and frowned. He told us that many people had gone there and found it unclean, hairs in drinks, etc. He recommended the Aspen, and told us how to get there, but . . . it was closed.
Just down the street, however, in Rawlins, Wyoming, was Anong’s Thai Cuisine.
The food was wonderful. We had hot tea and salad rolls, which came with a thick, spicy peanut sauce. I had the tofu in spicy basil sauce, and AdventureMan had spicy vegetables and cashews, and both were excellent. The service was prompt, courteous and helpful. It was a total surprise to find such excellence. They were doing great business, too, and we know why! The food was delicious!
The great food cancelled out the shock of our disappointing welcome in the Hampton Inns.
Update: AdventureMan talked with the day manager this morning who laughed and said that ‘Nate’ had put in his 2 weeks notice the night before and was unusually surly, but that at his best, he was always shoddy and unprofessional. We believe it is a very good thing that he find work elsewhere, and not in the hospitality industry. So don’t hold our experience against the Hampton Inns – it was a disgruntled employee we were dealing with, with many, many complaints against him.
Sights Along the Road from Boise to Utah to Wyoming
We drive. We trade off driving. During these long days, we do see some dramatic scenery, but we are driving for hours, and the best part of our day tends to be finding our hotel and settling in. We were lucky to find another Marriott Residence Inn in Boise, with a wonderful pool, a warm welcome, popcorn in the room to be popped in the microwave in our little kitchen. After lunch at Mazatlan, even though it was very salad-y, we were really sort of restauranted out, so we popped by a grocery store, bought sandwiches and salads, and took them back to eat at our own breakfast bar. After having a swim, of course.
The beds at the Marriott Residence are SO good. We sleep hard, and get up ready to start another day, the hot breakfast even includes oatmeal. I choke it down, thinking of how my sister Sparkle calls it ‘spackle’. Can you believe there are people living on this earth who LIKE eating oatmeal??
By seven ten we are on the road, by seven twenty we are back at the hotel. I was going to take a photo of the sunrise and discovered I had forgotten my camera at the hotel. I am thinking (glass half full) how very lucky I was to find out right away, and we were back on the road by seven thirty.
Here are some of the sights we saw – and only in Oregon and Idaho have I seen so many dogs in the back of trucks:
And never have I seen so many trucks. I though trucks were a very Southern thing, but they are also a very Western thing. Here are some sights from our long day:
We saw so many wonderful crops growing in Southern Washington, cherries, peaches, apricots, apples, beans – and in Idaho, we saw a lot of cattle, and sheep, and . . . we think these are potatos:
This was an unspeakable toilet I encountered in Southern Idaho, exceptionally bad.
Traffic was light through Wyoming, but heavy coming in the other direction:
We had a good thing and a bad thing happen at the end of the day, but that’s the next blog entry. 🙂
Eastern Oregon, Boise, Utah to Wyoming
The best part of this two day slog was finding this restaurant, Mazatlan, in Pendleton, Oregon:
It was a great break on a very long day.
Edmonds Market Day
It’s all rush rush rush but we make time on Saturday morning to go to the Edmonds Market, my very favorite thing to do. First, I wanted to show you how my little home town decorates the street lights with hanging baskets:
Street pots:
And one of my favorite vendors, the Cedar Creek Soap lady. 🙂
(My favorite soaps are Clove, Cinnamon Orange and Safari)
Wooded Boise
I am driving and AdventureMan is reading from the AAA Tour book.
“Basque explorers and hunters found the area and it was full of green trees so they called it Boisee´” he said.
Boise´ would be bwa-say, but Americans call it Boy’-see, LLOOLLL, and actually, most call it Boy’zee.
We also went through Yakima (first a as in “Al” or “advice) Ya’-kih-mah, and Umatilla, and all kinds of places with great names . . . Cle Elem, Snoqualamie, etc. but we did not go through Walla Walla. All these wonderful, colorful names, many from First Nation peoples, some from the earliest explorers, some names of early settlers. We crossed the 45th latitude in Oregon, and traces of the Oregon Trail.
Edmonds, Washington Street Gardens
In a time where states and counties and cities and towns are cutting back, I am infinitely grateful to my little home town that they find the resources to maintain the street gardens. In the town, you find huge baskets of flowers hanging from poles along the main streets (one of which is called Main Street, in true small town fashion). These are from the street level gardens; they are so beautiful.
Nearby, two of our favorite stores are side by side:
Woo HOOO, Half Price Books is having their annual Labor Day Sale, 20% off everything in the store. Like we need more books. 😉
“Why Are Barns Painted Red?”
This is what I love about long road trips with AdventureMan. We have hours together in the car, and you just never know where the conversations will go.
We saw a lot of barns. Most of them are red.
“Why are barns red?” AdventureMan asked. “Like we just accept that barns are red, when we are kids and we are told to draw a barn, we reach for the red crayon, why is that? Why red?”
So we looked it up at the next wireless stop and found the answer on Wiki answers:
Centuries ago, European farmers would seal the wood on their barns with an oil, often linseed oil — a tawny-colored oil derived from the seed of the flax plant. They would paint their barns with a linseed-oil mixture, often consisting of additions such as milk and lime. The combination produced a long-lasting paint that dried and hardened quickly. (Today, linseed oil is sold in most home-improvement stores as a wood sealant).
Now, where does the red come from?
In historically accurate terms, “barn red” is not the bright, fire-engine red that we often see today, but more of a burnt-orange red.
Farmers added ferrous oxide, otherwise known as rust, to the oil mixture. Rust was plentiful on farms and is a poison to many fungi, including mold and moss, which were known to grown on barns. These fungi would trap moisture in the wood, increasing decay.
Regardless of how the farmer tinted his paint, having a red barn became a fashionable thing. They were a sharp contrast to the traditional white farmhouse.
As European settlers crossed over to America, they brought with them the tradition of red barns. In the mid to late 1800s, as paints began to be produced with chemical pigments, red paint was the most inexpensive to buy. Red was the color of favor until whitewash became cheaper, at which point white barns began to spring up.
Today, the color of barns can vary, often depending on how the barns are used.
My dad and grandpa have been farmers their entire lives and they used to tease us kids that the barn was red because it was the most noticeable when the snow was falling sideways and you could barely see because of the sleet and hail.
Spokane and the Grill-Creamery
“Hey! AdventureMan said, “how about barbeque?”
“Sounds good to me,” I responded. After years of doing without, we are still vulnerable to the siren sound of barbecue.
On entering the parking lot, we got a clearer view of the sign.
Hmmm. Nope. Not quite what we had in mind.
Not sure where we were going, we drove further into the strip mall and there we found it:
Quirky. Individual. Not your franchise . . . just what we like, something new. It doesn’t always work out, but this one was pretty good. I had the Moussaka, and AdventureMan had the Gyros:
After dinner we hit the Spokane Fred Meyer where I found just exactly the right pants I was looking for – long pants for the Happy Baby, who is now crawling, and very very fast, so fast he gets rug burns on his knees. I always love shopping at Fred Meyers, especially when what I want is on sale, and then they take money off the sale price. Wooo HOOO, it brings out the cave woman in me, bringing home the bargain!
Leaving Spokane, the scenery changes again, back to warm and toasty, with lakes and windmill farms:
As we near Seattle, we see the Cascades, and Mt. Rainier:
The rest of the day wouldn’t interest you. It was hard work. When we opened up our storage locker, I looked at it in dismay . . . how had I let so much stuff accumulate over the last few years? I had survival stuff – laundry detergent, hair shampoo, a back up hair dryer, fingernail polish remover, envelopes, wrapping papers and ribbons, and all kinds of treasures I have brought back with each trip from overseas, to store until we live once again in Seattle. Now, we must get rid of what we can, and take the rest to Pensacola. Oh aargh. It was hard work.
We were rewarded with a beautiful Seattle sunset:
Retro – A Sioux Falls Moment
As we were driving around the outskirts of Sioux Falls, I said to AdventureMan “Look! He’s wearing a thobe!”
AdventureMan said “I saw it, but I just thought it was normal; I forgot where we are.”
The man, in his thobe, was exiting his car. It was nearing noon. I am guessing – in Sioux Falls – he was about to make his prayers.
It seemed so normal.
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