It could just be I'm easily impressed.

Had a pretty decent birthday today, or as decent as one can have when 4.5 hours of it is spent in car with your family. 

Our poor little Impreza was packed to the gills, but she made it nicely.  The only rough spot of the trip was when pulled into to the town of Odessa, thinking we would be able to off load some of on-board stowage tanks that had been filled up by lemonade.  Since we couldn't find any gas stations, we had to settle for the town parks restrooms, and it was a good thing we thought to bring toilet paper for the cabin, because it came in handy at the rest stop.

It's an interesting drive.  From Richland to the Columbia River(well, it's actually Lake Roosevelt, since it's upstream of the Grand Coulee Dam(and it's actually the 2nd time you go over the Columbia, since you go over to leave Richland on the freeway)), you are driving through the Channeled Scablands, rolling hills and gorges carved out of the basalt bedrock by ice age floods.  It's kind of brown, but many pretty different shades of brown, with the occasional farmers field starting to come up green.

Once you make it over Lake Roosevelt(on a tiny little 3 car 1 bus, 1 car ferry), things change, and you rapidly climb up into the dry Ponderosa Pine forests I love on the Eastern Slopes of the Cascades. 

One of the things that most impressed me on the drive, other than getting to be in green mountains again, were the number, and size, of dust devils we saw going through farm country.  Were saw at least 7 or 8 BIG ones.  I remeber living in Texas back in the early 80's, and seeing the occasional dust devil...but they were tiny...usually didn't raise up higher than our house...these today though...there were several that easily reached 150 feet into the air, and were 20-30 feet around at the base. 

At one point I even pulled over and made my wife take a picture of one, I was so impressed.  Looking at the picture, it now looks like one of those 'you had to be there moments'....but trust me...it was neat. 

Initial impressions of the cabin are good.  We are staying at a place called Tiffany's Resort, on Curlew Lake.  It's really not fair to call it a cabin...it's more of a rental cottage, or even a house.  There is a decent kitchen, and actually quite a fair amount of plates, pots, and general kitchen tools.  Sometimes, when you stay in a place with a kitchenette, you get like one pot and three spoons...not true here.

The view from the living room ain't quite bad either.