Indians Dinosaurs and Tea Pots

We head out of Kamiah ID heading to Yakima, WA. Today's travels include a couple of National Park visits and travel to put us in shouting range of Mt Ranier, which I have high expectations. We stayed at the Clearwater Motel in Kamiah which I will highly recommend to anyone needing a place to stay in the area.

We headed out around 8am following RT 12 which follows the Clearwater River. While not as twisty as the descent from the Lolo Pass, it does have nice sweepers.







The landscape changes rapidly going from green hills to ones that are shades of browns and tans. The hills appear to be covered with a velvet covering, like legs under a blanket.



We stopped at the Nez Perce National Historic Park. There is nothing much to see here, however the history is well worthwhile. We watched the video and took a look at the exhibits. Some of the exhibits has Indian garb on sculpture made out of little slats of wood. While they blend perfectly into the garb, they are quite striking in their own regard



Rangers setting up a tee pee. This was my first time really looking at these contraptions. They were quite efficient and ingenious in the complexity thru simplicity.



Click this picture, enlarge it in the new window and take a look at the detail. Really quite remarkable.



After spending more time than I intended (that is the case for all of the National Parks) we head out for Walla Walla. We did stop at one of our fellow FJR'r place to say hi, but Bob was out of town taking his daughter off to college. We were suppose to stop here for dinner last year, but the venison in Clyde Park had a different agenda in mind.





We screwed around in Walla Walla looking for BBQ joints for Smoke Chasing 2011. It seems that all have closed, but we did grab this one to shore up the state of Washington.



Then we had to grab the Car Parts sculptures at a local muffler shop.



A quick run down to Oregon to grab the Milton-Freewater Post Office for An Affair with Water hunt, we were off to the Whitman Mission. I have to admit for me this was a grab a stamp and run. Well actually I went outside to the shade, laid down on the ground and took a power nap. It was in the 90's and the heat was taking a toll.



From the Whitman Mission we have something like 100 miles to go to Yakima for the night so we broke up the ride by stopping to see the dinosaurs in Granger. There are a bunch of them around the town and they are life size.





Can't forget the all important Tea Pot Gas Station



Last stop of the day was this place in Yakima for Smoke Chasing 2011.