And we made it home last night
10,800 miles later we have finally closed out this trip, except for the final travel post. I intend over the next couple weeks to add some more posts about what we found on our trip, now that we have a good desktop machine and solid wifi to work with.
Our last days involved a trip to Richland and the Yakima Valley to pick up spring releases from a couple of our favorite wineries.
This also gave us a chance to stop at Cathy's family reunion where the eastern and western Washington sides of the family gather. Her grandfather Bernard Reynolds and his twin sister, Bertha, were raised on the east side in the Sunnyside, Granger area. He moved west to work for the railroad and she married and raised a large family on the east side of the mountains.
After Cathy's grandmother died the two sides decided to start an annual reunion called the Kissin Kousins. In years past, when our daughter was small, we'd get 200 -300 people camping out at Lake Easton State Park. When it got too big a hassle for the park we moved to other places in the area. It was basically half-way between both clans. In the past few years it's started to fall off as the original cousins have passed and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Bernard and Bertha have move on with their own lives in new, more far-flung locations.
On our way to Zillah to see Tad at Cultura and pick up our spring release we took a side highway rather than the interstate. This led us through Granger WA. Cathy's mother had a cousin who was the town police chief decades ago and they used to go there in the summer to visit. Cathy said the town looked pretty much the same except for the vacant businesses. The interstate let folks get to Yakima and Richmond in less than an hour and many businesses didn't make it. It's sad but a story repeated throughout small town America.
Tad and his wife, Sarah, run the winery by themselves. They only have a couple acres of vines. Tad buys his grapes from local vineyards that produce great grapes and makes outstanding wines. He is especially good at blending. If you're in the area you should stop. You'll be glad you do.
We picked up our spring release and 5 more bottles, his new Cab and 4 of the rose, and headed up the road. We hit the family reunion in Cle Elum, got to say hi to the group, catch some lunch and after visiting for an hour or two continued on our way west.
Last evening we went to one of our two favorite restaurants, Picolino's. It's run by Rafaeli and has true Italian cuisine. He's from Ischia, an island in the Bay of Naples and has had a couple different restaurants in Seattle. It ain't no Olive Garden, thank God. Rafi likes Cab so we gave him the one we bought that afternoon and proceeded to dinner.
Well, that's it for now. It's much nicer blogging w/ a good computer and solid wifi/internet access. One of the first purchases we'll have to make is a new laptop for travel. The iPad app does not do photo uploads well and you can't touch or do galleries like I include. The Asus is too old and it'd cost as much to upgrade it as to buy a new one. There's no choice, gotta upgrade.
I'll be taking a few days off from blogging to decompress and get started on finishing the horns on the steer skull we got in Santa Fe. Gonna make them shiny and hang them over the fireplace. It's one of the skulls from the Santa Fe photos. Track back to see it.
I want to do some writing on what we experienced, the good and the bad, as we journeyed around, literally, the country. Many impressions on the landscape, people and places we saw. I've relayed some of this in my posts and some definitely need more expounding.
Ciao for now