Day 6: Crossing over to Coeur d’Alene

We started the morning in Leavenworth, took a little River Walk along the Wenatchee River, surrounded by beautiful scenery like this:

It’s said that the Wenatchee region supplies more than half of the pears and apples consumed in the U.S. There are orchards along the road in that region stretching as far as the eye can see. Here’s a sample of the “fruit basket,” a pear tree near the road, and a closeup of the pears?

Before we left the area, we stopped at the Pioneer Village and Museum in Cashmere, a little bit east of Wenatchee. A very interesting museum to visit, if you get the chance. To me, artifacts about (my hero) Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe were most touching. A long time ago, I read the book describing the marginalization of the Nez Perce territory by U.S. forces, a sad tale of many negotiated treaties later broken, the loss of native habitat, and ultimately, the tribe’s attempt to escape to Canada, led by Chief Joseph, thwarted by the U.S. Cavalry, forcing what was left of the tribe to be assimilated with the Colville tribe, away from the lands of their origin. Chief Joseph, ever a peace-maker, famously stated “I will fight no more forever,” (the title of the book I read) but he died, it’s said, of a broken heart in 1904.

A more modern “Indian,” Ernest Tonk, was quite a painter; I snapped a couple of his paintings in the Cashmere museum, harkening perhaps to Remington or Russell?
After lunch, we headed up the Columbia a bit and then East again on Rte 2, through the wheat fields of Central and Eastern Washington:
The weather turned downright nasty as we drove along, with heavy rain, maybe a little hail, and wind gusts up to 55 mph crossing the road. We hit lots of tumbleweeds, and, at one point, the entire HUGE arm of one of those big circular irrigator machines came rolling across the field onto and over the road, crossing right behind us! Scary!
By the time we got into Coeur d’Alene, ID, the sun had come out again, so we went down to Lake Coeur d’Alene (labeled by National Geographic as one of the “5 most beautiful lakes in America”) to see the scenery, and let Jane shoot a photo of “Mudgie and Millie.”
Today, we’re holed up in a nice B&B in Coeur d’Alene, we’ll head on East to Montana tomorrow, don’t know about the blog-posting situation there, but we’ll rough it if we have to, maybe blog via smoke signals?