T+40: A Tale of Towns and Passes, Part 2

The coffee shop closes at 5pm, so we have to go.  It is still over 100 degrees.  We decide to make a quick shot to the next town, where there is a grocery store.    We push as fast as we can.   We pass through a landscape of rickety shacks, nice houses with watered lawns, industrial fruit farms with pickers’ cabins.  There are super skinny, burning-eyed young people all over the place.  We assume that these are some of the many “tweakers” mentioned by the barrista.

I make a wrong turn off the main highway, and we find ourselves in “Tweakerville”, suddenly having to push our bikes up a rough, dirt grade, in an neighborhood of beat up little houses with beat up old trucks, and old furniture, trash, and junk in the front yards.  We see a 7- 11 across the way and make our way to it, as fast we can.  We are panting and sweating profusely. 

Inside, we drink as much as we can, eat ice cream, take cold rags to our overheating bodies.  It is close to 6pm and there is a steady stream of working and poor people of European, Latino, and Native American ancestry coming in to buy beer and pop.   The store clerk commiserates with us about the heat and tells us that these temperatures usually don’t arrive until August, but lately they have been coming earlier and earlier.  He directs to the local Safeway, just up the hill.  It is still close to 100 degrees, even though it is after 7pm.    One guy takes a look at our bikes and trailers, and says, “That doesn’t seem to be a very good choice for riding today.”  What can we do but agree?

We dawdle in the store, pick up and write overdue condolence cards, talk to my mom on the phone, and otherwise kill time.   Just after 8 pm, the temperature is still 94 degrees, but we have to go.   There is a little campground on the Okanogan River we are trying to reach that evening.   As the shadows deepen, and the hills of the Okanogan Valley turn purple, we make our way to Margie’s RV Park and Pottery Barn Just before we cut down to the river, Wes yells “STOP!”  In the purpling light, he takes a short video of the ranch against the red canyon walls.

Riverside is a tiny town of just 350 people.  Susie has told me it is a little hippie enclave and so it seems, although it originally was the last place steamships could reach coming up the Columbia.  We get to the grassy, tiny, RV park, and are greeted by Margie’s daughter-in-law, an exceptionally skinny and obtuse 50 year old, who tells us, “No need to register, just give me the 14 bucks.”  We set up the tent, take a quick shower, and eat a bit in the dark.  We left Wilson and Susie’s 18 hours and a world ago.

The next morning, we are up before dawn to beat the heat. We cycle into the little town of Tonasket, through mile after mile of industrial fruit tree farms.  There are little breaks of pines, but mostly it is sagebrush desert or it is irrigated fruit farms.   We ponder the irony that many households in Portland, which must get 5 times the rain of the Okanogan valley, actively use xeriscaping to avoid watering their gardens and yards.  In this valley, sprinklers go constantly and every house that can creates a little English countryside with flowers and grass to fend off the sagebrush desert.  We wonder what the river would look like without the industrial tree farms and heavy duty watering.

At the first site of Shannon’s Fabulous Food and Espresso, under an enormous Catalpa tree, we both curve in.  While sitting there, we are just inches from a group of older European Americans.  We listen to their conversation, while pretending not to.   There is a long conversation about going to the casino on the nearby reservation.  One fellow notes, “They told me they collect the sales tax, like everybody else, but they use it to support the tribe.”  His compatriot snorts, “Yeah, more likely, buy the chief a Cadillac.”  They confer a bit more, and decide that the men will go to the casino, while their wives will go to the Walmart.  One notes, “Seems like the wife has got the car programmed to go the Walmart, every time we get close to Okan, we just turn right into the Walmart.”  We note that two of these folks leave in Cadillac Escalades. 

It is still morning, but too late to start the crossing of the next pass to the town on Republic.   We will have to spend the day. We ask about camping, and the waitress, says, “Stay here!  You can stay in the yard, and use the bathroom in the café.”  Without the map, and my phone dead again, we agree.  This proves to be a mistake.

I undertake a series of updates and repairs, while Wes reads at the whole food coop.  (This is typical for us.  I like projects; Wes likes stories.)  While tooling around town, and checking on Wes at the coop, I see that the town in split into three camps. 

There are the young alternative types, tattooed, pierced, and braided, teaching classes on permaculture, organizing and running the food coops, setting up massage and yoga parlors.  There are the industrial farmers in conservative haircuts, cotton plaid shirts tucked into pressed jeans, driving big American trucks.  Then there is a big group of young workers.  If they are Latino, they eat at the Mexican food trucks  outside in the heat.  There are also lots of skinny young men in beat up old trucks.   At the local dive bar, I have long conversation with a young man who had gone to school at Wyoming Tech to become a diesel mechanic.  Instead, he had become a fishing and hunting guide.   He used to take doctors and dentists from back East when he first started, but now “it’s all tech guys, geologists, and financiers.”  I am somewhat surprised to see him take a pinch of chewing tobacco as we talk.  It has been years since I saw someone “take a bite of snoose.”

We attend a perfectly awful concert of under-rehearsed and off-key bluegrass music in their lovely heritage park, where at least the people watching was good.  This is still the land of little dogs, which are welcome everywhere, including restaurants.  We are tickled by a pair of Chihuahuas who come over to visit us and who are the yin and yang of dogs. One named “Pacho” is very frightened, shaky, with his tale constantly between his legs; his “brother” Rip, described by his “mom” as having  “Riptitude”—was gregarious, curious, and proud.  A man in Yellowstone told her that he “could see the timber wolf” in this little dog.

Back at café, guests linger long into the night talking.  We are uncomfortable putting up the tent while people are still eating, but finally give up and do so, feeling extremely exposed.   The road traffic is noisy all night, and they forget to leave the door open, so we don’t have access to a bathroom after all.

The next morning we are up at 4am, to start the next pass---up Wauconda Pass to the little town of Republic.

TO BE CONTINUED…