BATTLE OF THE ANTS

When Rhonda wrote a blog post in which she mentioned visiting friends in my fair state, I jumped at the chance to make a drive and have lunch. Actually, what I said was that the drive was "218 miles, which I consider 'not far'...let me know if you can carve out a coffee time or *gasp* even a lunch and I would be up there in a heartbeat." And she did! Make time for lunch, that is, and I did indeed drive on up there. This map shows all the driving I did on Sunday.

I learned a lot about Washington on my drive. I learned where a lot of fruit is grown, and I learned that Google Maps provides only one of several possible ways to drive between Pullman and Chelan. I drove a different way back to Pullman and it was essentially the same mileage/driving time. The sights were slightly different, but only slightly—there's a whole lot of nothingness on all sides no matter which way you go. As you can see on the map, I was driving all around what we call "The Blank." The Cascades are not part of the Blank. The Blank ends at the Cascades. Hooray for the Cascades.

But anyway, Rhonda is as lovely and funny and nice as her blog suggests, and her baby is just as adorable as she appears in pictures. It was break time from the fam, though, as Rhonda—without hesitation—got into a stranger's car (mine) and directed us to the town of Manson and the wonderful little restaurant/berry farm called Blueberry Hills. Rhonda had blintzes, I had waffles, and we sat there for three hours and blah blah blah'd about all sorts of stuff. Then I bought an insane amount of blueberries to take back with me, returned Rhonda to her family, and headed back through The Blank to my humble Pullman abode.

There's an xkcd comic about Google Map directions that funny (per usual) but especially funny because at one point in my journey I was driving on 8 miles of a gravel road in the middle of rangeland. Wasn't expecting that.

Labels: misc life