Grumpy Bulldog Does America Day 11: End of Part 1

I have made it to Kent, WA, a suburb of Seattle--and maybe Tacoma too; I'm not sure on all the geography here.  I save like $40/night by not staying closer to the city.  In case you're wondering I haven't seen the Space Needle or any of that yet.  The GPS sent me on a merry chase through Renton and maybe another suburb to get here.  Most of the time the GPS is handy, but sometimes it's a pain in the ass, like when it turned me around for this "alternate route" that was supposed to save 2 minutes and ended up adding like 15 minutes because the road it wanted me to get on was all backed up for some reason.

Anyway, first I left Spokane this morning and mostly it was like South Dakota, only yellower and with fewer bugs splattering on my car it seemed.  Are they having the same drought as California?  It seemed there were a few ponds that were dried up.

Finally I got into the real mountains.  The ones in Montana and Idaho were big, but these were the bigger kind, some with snow on the tops.  Not that I ever had to get that far at least.  One thing I can say is I'm really sick of mountain driving after these last four days or so.  All that up and down and winding around is really a pain in the ass.  It's probably not great for my poor Focus's 4-cylinder engine either.

The highlight of that was crossing the Columbia River.  Really that looks like a smaller version of the Grand Canyon.  It was kind of freaky on first approach, but by the time you get to the bridge over the river you're not so high up and it's not so scary anymore.

And then after that was more mountains and stuff.

The only thing now is I've spent all this time getting here and I'm not really sure what to do now.  I'm kind of wondering if it'd be better to do more touristy stuff on a weekday when there might be less people around or if it's better when you don't have normal business traffic.  I should check to see if the Seahawks are playing at home again on Sunday because I wouldn't want to be downtown then.  OK, they're not.  And the Mariners leave town Sunday, so good for me.

On the plus side I did do my laundry, so at least I have clean underwear.