April 30th

I got lucky this morning. You may remember that early in my trip I took a tour of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the three secret cities built by the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bombs. One of the other cities was Hanford in southeastern Washington. I knew they didn’t have tours on Monday or Tuesday, but the Visitor Center opens at the early hour of 7:00 AM, so I went there this morning and saw the film and exhibits there.

Then off to Pullman, the home of Washington State University, where my nephew Trevor graduated a few years ago. I visited the art museum, peeked into the football stadium and saw Trevor’s freshman dorm.

Then Spokane, the big city in Eastern Washington. I went to the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture, with interesting exhibits on modern glass design (featuring Dale Chihuly), and the only painter in the world whose canvases are all set out above the Arctic Circle in Canada. There was also a tour of a mansion that was the original museum on the site before being restored back to the gilded age.

I travelled to a public park with a conservatory, a Japanese garden and a rose garden (not yet in bloom on the last day of April). I concluded my tour of Spokane walking around Gonzaga University, where they are patiently awaiting a college basketball national championsip.

I arrived at my stop for the night in Coeur d’Alene Idaho just in time to hike up Tubbs Hill for sunset over the lake.

The song of the day is “What’s Your Name” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, a very #MeToo inappropriate song about a seduction in (Boise) Idaho.

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