Summer and wet, winter and dry

Mom left Monday, Rhoda left Thursday, but Dad has decided to stay an extra week to get all his projects done before going back to work his job in Alaska. Projects such as power washing the house, building a second fence to keep the goats a little away from the house and give Tilly her own mini yard, installing an electric fence inside the entire existing fence for those darn goats, fixing the doors on the laundry, and building benches for the 12 flights of stairs to the beach.

While Dad was being so productive, Tilly and I headed to the beach.
Tilly found a great spot to lay down and chew her stick - on top of a barnacle covered rock?

I found a healthy colony of sand dollars happily living in the low tide of our beach while going to retrieve Tilly's ball after another one of her "science experiments". (She intentionally brings her ball out about chest deep in the water and sets it in. It floats! She pushes it down and it pops back up - floats again! She pushes it down, it pops back up! Down and up! Down and - oh. No more ball. Why isn't it popping back up? Paw at sunken ball now filled with water. Be frustrated that the science is broken. Stand guard over sunken spot until Ariel comes to save the ball. Be happy and really really want to try it again! Ariel will not be so silly as to give you the good ball near the beach for the rest of the day. Find a stick instead and be happy with that. Happy puppy.)

But I went barefoot to retrieve said ball and remembered how wonderful it is. How can people live in a place away from the ocean? Away from nature and the feeling of connection with the earth? Lovely, beautiful, warm days on the beach.

On our property, flowers are blooming, the asparagus and potatoes are coming up, it's t-shirt weather and wonderful.

But we decided to take advantage of having my dad here to watch the animals and headed east for some exploring of Washington. As we came to the foot of the Cascade mountains, we came into the catch for all extra rain and trees heavy with moss. 

As we climbed over the pass, rain turned to snow and we found ourselves in a wonderland. 

A really really cold wonderland.

A bit of road at the highest point of the pass had been plowed into a channel and was closed off to road traffic.

Aside from the half an inch we had here on Whidbey for a day or two in the winter, Tilly's never really seen snow, and after waiting for me to pack all day then riding in the car for hours, she was thrilled to get out and run in the white.

As we came down the east side of the mountains, the snow let up and we found a camping spot. Maybe the first campgrounds we came to after the pass wasn't the best idea, but starting out on our trip after work on Friday night, the light was dimming fast and we didn't want to miss out on any of the views of our adventure.

In the morning, we drove a few hundred feet down the road and saw signs for "snow machine recreation area" and "winter recreation" and "skiing". ... maybe next time we'll drive a little farther off the mountain before stopping.

Acres of cherry trees covered in a gauzy net.

After a short, cold night of fitting all three of us (Tilly, Tim, Ariel) into one sleeping bag for warmth and wishing we'd brought more sleeping pads, a smaller warmer tent, a bigger warmer sleeping bag... we got up around 6 with the sun and resumed driving Northeast. 

The view in the morning was vastly different from what we went to sleep with. Vastly different from what we've grown up with and how we're used to living.

But also beautiful and stunning in it's own way. With apprehension, the dry east started growing on me.

We drove all the way up highway 20 to Tonasket, then north on highway 95 to the Canadian boarder. 

From there we veered off on every side road, dirt road, and forest service road we saw on our map, trying never to repeat our path to see as much of the land as possible. Every where we went there was sage brush or apple trees; so many acres of Gold Digger apples! 

"There were at least 13 fruit warehouses in Oroville alone. Gold Digger Apples eventually merged and/or acquired all of those warehouses, leaving it as the sole fruit packing, storing  and shipping facility in Oroville. To this day, Gold Digger remains the only fruit warehouse in  the Oroville area. ... Gold Digger remains a viable fruit co-op, the last grower owned co-op in Okanogan County and the only co-op  with an organic program. Gold Digger has numerous members and non-members that bring their fruit to be stored, packed and shipped at our facilities."

Rivers and lakes snaked through the dry land bringing life and a diverse abundance of plants and animals, though different from the Sitka spruce and nettles we're used to in the West.

Though in the dry East from what we're used to, this land is a bit more of the "wild West" with large ranches, cattle guards, and small towns made up in the old-time way.  

Like Whidbey, property was for sale all over the place, and being dry and far from I-5, land seems to go for $1k-3k per acre, depending on amenities for everything but the secret mansions in the hills. 

Tim's eager curiosity for our trip to the land of snakes and ticks was the mining history. Names like "Oroville" are give-aways into that history.

We found a small start of a mine adit, with hints something bigger might be nearby.

We also found the remains of a larger, possibly more recent operation with bunkhouses and a shaft still rigged up with equipment. 

After 6 hours or more of driving with short sight seeing stops, we grabbed some lunch and headed up to what I was most looking forward to, Turtle Lake.

We had looked on the internet and found a dream property for sale with people seeming to live the sort of life we think we might like. I was skeptical from the Google Earth view, but going up the hill above the sweet town of Tonasket to Turtle Lake, I found a place that reminds me of Peterson Lake Cabin in Juneau, the first cabin I ever went to as a few-week-old baby and one of my favorite places. We got out for a short walk on unmarked property and imagined what it might be like to live in a place like that. The lake is a bit of an oasis in the desert and a place of serenity and beauty.

We headed off our hill to continue the exploration and found the small tourist community of Conconully at far to high an elevation for comfortable camping, continued down the road and found ourselves heading through the cowboy community of Winthrop on our way out of town back over the hills. 

After a brief consideration, we decided another night of sleeping in a ski area and waking up to frozen water in Tilly's bowl could be replaced with a warm night in our own bed and all of Sunday to recover from the adventures. 

We braved the blizard back over the pass, this time skipping the stop at the top. I tried hard to stay awake and keep Tim company but the battery of snow had me closing my eyes and drifting off until we got back towards I-5 and the world of cities and traffic and dense population zones. 

Oh, what's this? Just the blisters on Tim's hands from driving all day at work Friday, then hopping in the car for another 5 hours or so after work, then topping it off with a 6am to midnight 18-hour shift at the wheel. Our whirlwind driving tour of Eastern Washington!