Wash Day On The Palouse

 

Looking around for roadside attractions in this part of the world, we found the town of Toppenish. Toppenish is big on public art, mainly large murals, painted on the sides of buildings.

I think there about 75 of them, scattered around town, and we focused on the downtown area and took some snapshots.

On Of My Favorites

Roadside attractions also pulled up the Teapot Dome gas station located in Zillah, Washington. Its quite a attractive little building, that was built in 1922, and it is listed in the national register of historical places. Of course it was built to call attention to the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration, where Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon gave sweet no bid contractors to the oil companies.

Teapot Gas Station 

Albert went to prison for his regression, and the oil companies went on to wholly own our government, so that this kind of scandal would never happen again.

The other attraction that I knew about, and had previously visited, as a back seat passenger in a car is the spectacular  Palouse Falls.

Neither of our GPS’s would pull up the park, but by looking at the tiny speck on the paper map it was almost clear to see that the falls were right off Washington 261, that is right off Washington 21, and everyone knows that 21 is right off of 26. By zooming the scale of my motorbikes tv screen map way out I could clearly see these highways and see our progress to the falls.

After a few twisty  miles on 261 I could see the little brown sign pointing the way to the park.

At the entrance to the park I noticed a cattle guard protecting the rod, and some gravel after it. I committed and pulled onto the road.

I remember the road as being chip sealed, but after a few feet I realized that the road was not chip sealed but hard packed gravel.

Now this wouldn’t normally be a issue, except my traveling compadre is riding on a brand-new bike, and she despises gravel, almost as much as the people that lead her to it.

I figured that the grandeur of the falls would make up for any disparaging feelings about gravel, but then we hit the washboard, and this was heavy duty extra soiled laundry washboard, that was causing the front to bounce one way, the rear to bounce another, and the windscreen vibrate to a frequency that was alerting the nearby marmots of our presence.

Finally the two miles was up, and I spun around in the parking lot to wait for my compadre. It didn’t take her to long to show up, and after a picnic lunch we walked over to look at the falls.

Palouse Falls

The grandeur of the falls did make up for the road, except we had to go back to the pavement, but hay guess what, the road back was much smoother than the way in, and had we known that  all we  would had to do to avoid the washboard on the way in, was to make like we were back in New Zealand…

Thanks for reading