Since our son completed library school, he and his family have lived in Western Washington. During the years that we lived in South Dakota, after he moved to the Pacific Northwest, we made regular trips across the state of Washington on our way to and from visits to them. In the process, we have taken several different routes across the state. Traveling east to west, US 12 enters the state at Clarkston after winding over Lolo pass in Montana and crossing the Idaho panhandle. It winds southwest to very near the southern border of Washington at Walla Walla then heads north a bit to cross the Columbia at Pasco. If you want to take the southernmost east-west highway from there, US 14 follows the north side of the Columbia, which is the border between Washington and Oregon. At Vancouver, the river turns north and Interstate 5 follows the river north to Longview, where a state road takes travelers out to the coast.

However, if one stays on US 12 from Pasco, the route takes you up to Yakima and across the southern part of the state across the Cascades north of Mount Saint Helens to Chehalis and from there out to the coast at Aberdeen, about a third of the way up the Olympic Peninsula.

The most common, and probably fastest route across the state from east to west is Interstate 90, which enters the state near Spokane. Most of the highway has a 70 mph speed limit and unlike the other routes, the Interstate bypasses towns, meaning you don’t have to slow for city traffic. From Spokane, it dips a bit southwest. At Ellensburg the highway begins to climb the Cascades, summiting at Snoqualmie Pass before heading to downtown Seattle.

The most northern east-west route in the state is also probably the slowest. Washington highway 20 winds through the mountains in the upper quarter of the state and crosses a dramatic pass before descending into North Cascades National Park, crossing Interstate 5 at Burlington and heading out onto Fidalgo Island and over a dramatic bridge onto Whidbey Island.

South of Washington 20 and north of Intestate 90 lies US 2, crossing the center of the state from Spokane to Everett and summiting the Cascades at Stevens Pass. It is one of our favorite ways to cross the state and it is the route we took yesterday as we came home from camp.

The central part of Washington is high plains desert, with wheat being the main crop. The farms are large and the highway stretches on before meeting and crossing the Columbia River south of the Grand Coulee Dam. From there it crosses more high desert country before beginning the climb into the Cascades at Wenatchee. One of the goals of our drive yesterday was stopping at the fruit stands near Wenatchee to pick up peaches and apricots. Purchasing cases of fruit at stands near the orchards on the east slopes of the Cascades has become a family tradition for us. When we lived in South Dakota, we often stopped for early crop apples on our way home, sometimes taking a couple of cases back with us. Had we not planned our trip across the state to attend church camp in Idaho, we probably would have made a trip to Wenatchee to pick up peaches sometime in the next couple of weeks. As it turned out, we added cases of peaches and apricots to our camping gear in the back of our car. We weren’t the only ones to have that idea. As we were leaving one of the fruit stands, we recognized fellow family campers in a car that had just pulled into the lot.

US 2 over Stevens pass is a beautiful drive and we were early enough in the evening yesterday to have plenty of light for our journey. The highway follows a route near to that of the railroad tracks that carry Amtrak trains on their east-west route across the state, and follows the Skynomish River down from the pass towards Monroe, which is the site of the State Fairgrounds. At Everett, we joined Interstate 5 heading north and, after a stop for gas and a sandwich, made our way home as the sun was setting.

As we drove yesterday, I thought of the many trips we have made across the state. There have been several trips where we entered the state at Spokane and headed southwest to the Columbia, crossing at Pasco, then heading south to join Interstate 84 in Oregon on our way to Portland. One of the first times we made the trip, we had a car that did not have an air conditioner and the trip through the high desert was a hot one. We were glad to get to the Columbia. Even though the weather was still hot, we could see the water and before long we reached the cooler weather of the Cascades.

Yesterday the weather is what I might call typical for summer in the center of the state. Temperatures were in the eighties, a good 20 degrees cooler than when we were headed east to camp a week earlier.

I suspect that we have had more opportunities to travel across the state than many folks who, like us, are newcomers. Even those who have lived in the state all of their lives may not have found reasons to cross the state as often as we have. It feels good to have our new home state be familiar to us. Of course there is a lot more to this state to explore than what we have seen and we have a sense that some day we need to take the time to do a bit more exploring, but we enjoy getting off of the Interstate and following the two lane roads.

The North Cascades have large areas of wilderness where there are no roads and there are several roads that give access to towns and recreational areas that do not connect to other roads of go all the way over the mountains. In fact there is a road between Holden and Luceme, that doesn’t connect to any other road. It can be reached only by boat on Lake Chelan. We won’t be driving on that road, but it is fun to know that it is there and that there are people who live in such remote places.

Today it is back to church and back to work, after a wonderful week of camp. We’re eager to see folks and report on our experiences, knowing that there is much more to explore when we once again have time to travel.