Washington Road Trip

So it took us 8 hours to drive across the state...

Would you expect anything less? 

My last post recapped our weekend with Lauren which was all fine and dandy! I'm really happy we got to see her, especially before senior year. Now, it was time for the sisters portion of the trip. 

Gina and I left Spokane Monday morning for the open road. Because we were on the East side of the state, I took it as an opportunity to see attractions on this side of Washington. Instead of taking the normal westward route via I-90, we went south, mainly towards nothing. 

I cannot tell you how many times we asked, where are we? It was desolate. Cars would pass us every so often and we'd cheer at the sign of civilization. About an hour in, we lost all service and were navigating from the map. 

After some driving, we entered the town of Washtucna, which we thought was wash-TUNA (a good indicator of our mental state) and it ended up being sort of a ghost town. We pressed on and finally saw signs for our first destination of Palouse Falls. 

At the turn for Palouse, we drove another 20 minutes down a windy road exclaiming WHERE ARE WE???????????? Finally the road opened up to a parking lot and we hopped out of the car. About 30 paces away, the land opened up and there was a giant waterfall.

Palouse is one of the most random things I've ever seen. Gorgeous, nonetheless, but if you ever go there, you'll understand.

There's absolutely nothing in the area, then BAM! a waterfall. 

Gina and I decided to explore the surrounding trails in the scorching heat. Let me emphasize scorching. All I can say is thank God we had AC in the car. 

I'm happy I got to see Palouse, although I would have hated myself if I'd drive across the state one day just for that. If you're in the area, definitely go, but do not make a huge effort. 

Right outside of the state park is a PNW icon known as That NW Bus. 

It's just a random graffitied bus in the middle of a field that was made famous by instagram. I mean if it's right there, we were going to make a stop to see it. With spotty service, Gina tried to read directions on how to find the bus. Guessing from the map she told me to head in the direction we needed to eventually go and I looked out my window to see us speeding by the bus. 

With no one on the road, I made a quick U-Turn and managed to find a dirt road leading us right to the bus. From afar, the bus was way cool. Upon closer inspection, the thing was absolutely nasty. There was trash scattered all around: empty beer bottles, a couch, and who knows what else. I wanted to actually go on the bus and check out the inside, but turned right around when I realized there were tons of wasps nest and the seats were destroyed. Kinda disappointing. I'm mainly disappointed in the people who trashed the area. Who does that??

Eh, it was pretty cool still and allowed Gina and I to switch driving. 

Gina is one of those people who can drive for hours on end (thank goodness) and enjoyed the drive. I've gotta say, Washington is a great place, but Central Washington is a whole lot of nada. We slowly started to get back to civilization when we hit a town called Connell. Funny enough, I thought the road went straight to Ellensburg until Gina started barking at me for directions. In a panic, I told her straight and pulled up the directions to learn we should have gone right. It wasn't a huge deal, only a slight detour, but Gina wouldn't let me hear the end of it. In order to prevent another episode like that and potentially get lunch, we pulled off at a Subway sign (which we could not find??) and regrouped. As we planned, Gina stopped mid sentence and told me to look behind us. 

Well...

I have no idea what this was doing here. I'm chalking it up to "road trip things". 

Back on the road, we made great progress and nearly made it out of Central Washington, but needed to stop in Ellensburg for lunch and gas. We found a legit Subway and called the parents to let them know where we were. It should also be noted that the Subway in Ellensburg is kind of strange. There was just something off about it and it had two levels. What Subway needs two levels? Feeling the weird vibes, we munched on our sandwiches and continued on. 

At this point, we were 90, heading towards Snoqualmie Forest which has lots of hikes. We had been driving for a few hours and I thought it might be nice to stretch our legs. Lucky for us, the hike to Franklin Falls was 15 minutes off the highway and less than 2 miles round trip. Perfect! 

I told Gina to exit and we traveled down the wooded road to a campground, but no Franklin Falls trail. Hmm...we kept going and going. Our search for the trail head managed to take another 20 minutes. We made it there once we realized I was reading the directions BACKWARDS (they were for entering at the other directions). We had been in the car together for a while and frustrated that the directions were unclear, so we were ANNOYED; annoyed with each other, annoyed with trail, annoyed with driving, just flat out annoyed and snappy. But, we had driven this way and went through all of that nonsense, so you know full and well we were going to do this damn hike.

Once we found the trail, we had trouble parking the car because all of the immediate spots were handicapped. This force us to drive up the adjacent gravel road to another trail head and park there. Because it was so late in the evening (about 6 pm), I didn't really want to pay for the pass since we'd already paid for another that morning. Super paranoid, I told Gina let's go and we ran the trail. 

So much for a good place to stretch our legs. We were running and completely irritated with each other. Franklin Falls came into view and thankfully put an end to all of our bickering. We ran back to the car to thankfully find no ticket and no one else in the parking lot. I mean who starts a hike at 6 pm?? (we do...lol)

Exhausted, and still 1-2 hours away from my apartment, we stopped in North Bend for pie at Twede's Cafe. We also salads because I couldn't tell you the last time I had even SEEN a vegetable. 

I took over the last leg of driving and made a pit stop at Snoqualmie Falls for the third fall of the day. Thank God this was the most impressive falls, it was nice to end on a high note. 

We rolled up to my apartment back in Seattle around 8 pm. It was quite the road trip and Gina is one of the best road trip buddies. Honestly, leave it to us to maximize our road trip shenanigans, but I'd totally do it all again.