Shifting Gears

Click on pictures to enlarge.

It’s a small world after all . . .
   Here we are, twelve-hundred miles from home, and what happens when I venture into the local antique shop? I wind up talking with a lady named Joan who had a B&B on Whidbey Island and another lady named Somebody Jones, who clerks the store, about the wonders of Crest Road East as the favorite make-out venue of our youths!

   Then David takes a seminar at last week’s Trawler Fest (if you’re in Washington, there’s a festival this weekend!), and the instructor’s from Kilmarnock, a four-mile hop from the Wilshin home in Irvington, VA. PS – our favorite contest was the Quick-build boats, where contestants built floatable, ridable boats in a hurry, and solicited votes (dollar bills) from passers-by. Vote well, vote often!
   THEN, we strike up a conversation with a guy at the PCA Eastern Washington wine tour, and it ends up his dad’s living in Saluda, a mere six-miles as the birds fly from Irvington.

Six degrees is in the air!

Speaking of Porsche Club of America. . . .

   For us, last weekend’s  PCA wine tour and dinner at Columbia Crest started in Issaquah, where, along with wonderful long-time friends Liin and Lave Gustafson, we enjoyed a yummy Hawaiian-themed dinner at Dan and Marilyn Wilshin’s home in Issaquah. Good food, company and ambience! It doesn’t get any better than that, even if we didn’t get to bed until after one!

   The next morning, through driving rain, we and thirty-three other 

Porsches of varying styles and vintages headed up and over the snowy Snoqualamie Pass to the foothill farmland between Cle Elum and Ellensburg. Porsche ralliers LOVE early morning blue road drives through agricultural country while the state troopers are ostensibly still cozily nestled in their Dunkin’ Donuts seats.   

   We were pleased to know that the warnings we’d gotten about Washington PCA drivers not being speeders proved to be a myth. OF COURSE Porsche drivers love to speed, especially around things they shouldn’t, like hairpin curves. What were we thinking? (I always say it is the white knuckle passenger who is the braver on these trips!) 

      Highlights of the drive to the wineries: 1) emerging from the forested mountains to see Ellensberg sprawled out on the valley floor like a glorious picnic spread (picture above right), and 2) tracing the serpentine curves of Yakima Canyon in fourth gear.

   Once in Prosser, we hit Hogue Cellars,where our NW club met with two other Porsche Clubs for a picnic. (Yes, one can get tired of seeing eighty or ninety Porsches parked in a lot!) There, we connected with fun people before setting off to other wineries. To tell you the truth, after driving so long on so little sleep, and being a bit pickled at that, we really wanted to find our hotel and go to sleep. But we weathered the day and visited first Terra Blanca, which was pretty, but had, in our taste, bland wine, and then Kiona, from whom we bought a dappled, yet sturdy Cabernet which we’ll uncork next week to accompany a nice filet and some frites.

   We wanted in the worst way to go to Fidelitas, but got lost because the map lied, and so we did get our nap before the dinner festivities, in which I won a logo t-shirt (alas size S) and a white baseball cap, which I’ll donate to David, who will actually wear it. 
   Morning came early, and we hit the road in time to have breakfast at Mel’s Diner in Yakima. In all honesty, I do not judge towns by the people who eat at the local greasy spoon, but if I were to do so, I would say that Yakima residents pick an era and stick with it. Yesterday’s parade included an Elvis impersonator (except he was thin, sported white hair and wore impeccably polished Tony Lamas), a ZZ Top shoe-in, Janice J., and Kurt Cobain.  

   The best parts of our seven-hour blue-road trip home were: 1) driving past the old trains in Snoquomish, 2) oreo cows, 3)hunting dog trials, 4) Children’s Garden Flowers, and 5) Route 9 through Skagit County (our county).    

   OH, and we did get the garden weeded (it took three people a week to accomplish this), and now we get to buy plants to cover or distract from all the rocks that hold our home in its place on along the mountain.