Connell's wildlife

Connell's whimsical sidewalk art

Connell, Washington, is a small town about 35 miles north of Pasco on Highway 395, which used to run through the town but now bypasses it.



I lived there for eight years in the 1980s when I published the town's weekly newspaper, the Franklin County Graphic. I make frequent trips to the town, which has doubled in size since a prison was built there, to see friends.

Wildlife has changed since I lived there. I remember one Saturday night the most exciting thing happening was that a snake crossed the town's main street, stopping traffic, and crawled up into the wheel hub of my car.

Connell's Columbia Avenue boasts a different type of wildlife now. In 2010, the town installed six bronze scupltures of various wildlife seated at concrete picnic tables, with room for people passers-by to join them.

The bronze and cast concrete sculptures were created by Ton Otterness in a project sponsored by the City of Connell and the Washington Arts Commission. The series is called, appropriately, Wild Life.

The whimsical characters include animals and veterans playing cards in front of the American Legion; farm families meeting with a banker to get a loan for a manure spreader, and a coyote ordering a mouse in the mail in front of the post office.



The Pendleton Round-Up: Let 'er buck!

Statue at Round-Up arena entrance

Whenever I make a list of my favorite things, rodeos are always on the list. I love a good rodeo! Fortunately, I live in the West, where there are plenty of opportunities to indulge this passion.

I grew up going to rodeos. We almost always went to the St. Paul, Oregon, rodeo over the Fourth of July with its awesome fireworks after each night's performance. When we didn't spend July 4 at St. Paul, we spent it at the Mollala Buckaroo where organizers brought in stars from top television Westerns to entertain. I remember one year that I was close enough to touch Annie Oakley's horse as it walked by. Of course, Annie was really the actress Gail Davis, but it still was an awesome experience for a kid.

Yesterday, we attended the Pendleton Round-Up, one of the top rodeos in the West. In a couple of events, the animals bested the cowboys, though they didn't get points for doing this. Everyone laughed as one winning steer left the cowboy in the lurch then ambled off to nibble grass on the grassy oval in the middle of the arena as he wasn't in any hurry to go back to the pen. The round-up arena doubles as the high school football field.

It was a nice rodeo, but not that all exciting. For us, the highlight of the day was the Happy Canyon pageant, put on by Native American plateau tribes. More than 400 people participated in the pageant which began with explanations of Indian traditions and their way of life. It progressed with the coming of the white man to the West and how this movement changed their way of life. The finale was absolutely stunning, as a brave astride a magnificent paint horse rode to an upper stage holding the U.S. flag as the audience sang the national anthem. This was especially moving as just yesterday morning it was announced the ambassador to Libya had been killed when terrorists attacked the embassy there.

Country Mercantile

Country Mercantile, a few miles north of Pasco on Highway 395, is one of our favorite places to go. My husband is addicted to their sausage dogs and gourmet carmel corns. I like their fresh salsas and their $2 table.

Country Mercantile started out as a small one-room produce stand in the 1990s, but has expanded greatly over the years. Fresh fruits and veggies still star here, but homemade candies, ice cream and salsas share the stage along with other gourmet goodies and gift items.

Their salsas are the best for miles around. They come in a multitude of flavors - my favorite is the roasted garlic and olive, and they've got a suicide salsa for folks who like it fiery hot. Mangoes, peaches, pineapple, avocados and asparagus are some of the other flavors. Sometimes they have a cherry salsa that is almost sweet enough to use as a topping on ice cream.

The store has a huge parking lot, and it's needed, especially on summer weekends, to handle all the RVs that stop. A harvest festival in the fall draws thousands of people over several weeks to pick pumpkins and navigate a corn maze.

McNary National Wildlife Refuge

Pelican at the refuge visitor center.

If you like looking for birds, the place to do this is the McNary National Wildlife Refuge, which straddles the Snake and Columbia rivers in Washington and Oregon.

Whether you're driving Highway 12 south of Pasco, taking another highway west at Wallula Junction and driving to Umatilla, refuge signs abound. Usually you can see hundreds of water birds swimming in the lakes on both sides of Highway 12.

The refuge covers more than 15,000 acres as it meanders through the Columbia Basin. The birds you'll see depend in large part on the time of the year. Canada geese, mallards, wigeons and other ducks favor the refuge during the winter months. And don't forget bald and golden eagles, hawks and peregrine falcons.

Other times of the year you'll find owls, wrens, blue herons and pelicans, not to mention mule deer, badgers and muskrat.

Entrance to the visitor center at Burbank Heights.

The educational center at Burbank Heights, just off the Waitsburg Highway, has a wonderful display of the birds and animals you'll see throughout the refuge. When you visit the center, take time to walk the paved trail  to a bird blind where you can watch birds in the small lake. Signs also identify the different vegetation you'll find in the refuge.

We made our first visit to the center earlier this week after we made a last-minute decision to escape the heat by camping at Hood Park, a pretty park along the Snake River about a mile from where it empties into the Columbia. It was almost like camping in our backyard, as it was only about 10 miles from our house, We were surprised to see so many other residents there.

We had some free time one afternoon, so we hopped on our scooters to explore the area that we usually just drive through on our way to somewhere else. That's how we found the refuge's visitor center.

Maryhill: A Washington State Treasure

Maryhill Museum of Art, located in southcentral Washington, has always been my favorite museum, and the museum by which I judge other museums. This is only natural, perhaps, because it was the first museum I ever went to, back when I was about five years old.

Six decades later, I am still going back to Maryhill usually every year or so. Now that I am older, I can really appreciate its charms.

The museum is fantastic! It has the largest collection of Rodin work on the West Coast, a great collection of chess sets, marvelous baskets woven by Northwest Native Americans  and an historic collection of memorabilia contributed by Queen Marie of Romania, a granddaughter of Britain's Queen Victoria. These holdings include her throne, Faberge items, intricately gilded furniture and portraits of the royal family.

But Maryhill is more than a museum. It also includes Washington's Stonehenge, pictured above, which is a monument to Klickitat County soldiers who died in World War I. It is the first WWI monument built in the United States.

It also includes the first paved road in Washington State. Down the road from the museum is Maryhill Winery, which brings in big-name entertainers for summer concerts.

What really adds to Maryhilll's charms are the stunning vistas. Maryhill sits on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River Gorge. On a clear day, you really feel you can see forever!

Because I'm so enthusiastic about Maryhill (we take all out-of-state guests there), I've written an ebook about it: Maryhill, A Washington State Treasure, which is now available on Amazon Kindle. This is a text-only version.

If you like pictures with your words, you'll probably like my podcast, Maryhill: Guarding the Columbia River Gorge, better. Do note that my ebook is a much-updated, expanded version of the podcast which is also available from Amazon or Visual Travel Tours. Use code cp20 if you order direct from VTT; you'll get a 10 percent discount.

Camping in the great Pacific Northwest

Karner Flat campground

When you live in the Pacific Northwest, with mountains covered with tall trees, the outdoors plays a major part in your life: hiking, canoeing, camping, wildlife watching.
I grew up camping in central Oregon and along the beautiful Oregon coast. Over the years I've camped in many states, including Washington, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, as well as British Columbia.


For the last 10 years or so, a majority of my camping has been in Washington's central Cascades, namely the scenic Little Naches area, so named because this is where the Little Naches River bisects the Wenatchee National Forest.

The area has several developed campgrounds, but it's not unusual to come across campers in isolated spots.



We used to camp at Lost Meadow, which only had a vault toilet, but was just a two-minute mosquito-ridden walk away from elk-grazing pastures. Alas, the trees became diseased and died, leaving the site with no shade, but still lots of dirt kicked up by dirt-bike riders heading to or from the trails. The Little Naches district is one of the few areas in the state where trail riding is allowed.

This year, however, we switched to a developed campground at Kaner Flat. The tall firs and pines are still vibrant, with paved roads throughout the campground. It's within walking distance of the Little Naches River, which you can hear gurgling by when there's no traffic. Kaner Flat is historic, as it was used as an overnight rest stop for immigrants crossing the Cascades to Western Washington.

One of the delightful parts of the trip is always passing through the small town of Naches, where fruit stands line the highway. The Yakima Valley is the state's fruit basket. We always buy whatever is in season, from just-picked cherries to peaches and apricots.







Red & Blue: a book review

Books written by people I know occupy a prominent place on my shelves. The latest to join my growing collection is Red & Blue: A Memoir of Two Alaskan Tour Guides, written by Judy Shuler aka "Red" and Hildegard Ratliff aka "Blue," who spent many years working together as private tour operators in Juneau, Alaska.

The majority of the book is written by Judy with colorful anecdotes by Hildegard sprinkled throughout the book's 258 pages.

While the book devotes space about everything from the red tape they had to go through to become licensed tour operators to their more memorable tourists, the book really shines when Judy writes about the wonders of her adopted state's environment. She was born and grew up in Wisconsin, moving to Alaska in the mid 1960s.  She spent the next 45 years of her life living in, first, Anchorage and then Juneau. She now lives in her husband's hometown in western New York.

Red & Blue reads very much like a farewell gift to the state she loves so much. Alaska will always be part of her as it is me. I lived in Alaska for eight years, mostly in Anchorage but almost a year in Juneau. In my heart, I still consider myself an Alaskan, though I moved to Washington in 1978. But Alaska never had the impact on me that it had on Judy, so I question now if I should still consider myself an Alaskan.

She quotes liberally from John Muir, a 19th century naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club, who spent a substantial amount of time in Alaska himself. Her deep concern for the Alaskan environment, particularly that of Southeastern, is very evident. Red & Blue is clearly a book that environmentalists will love.

The book also paints vivid pictures of Juneau, the state's capitol, and how her residents cope with rain and fog almost every day. That, I can tell you, is not very easy for some people, me included, to do. I didn't mind so much not being able to see across the street because the fog downtown was so thick. What I minded was the airport being so fogged in that planes couldn't land for days at a time which meant no mail, no newspapers and definitely no new TV programming. In those days, shows were taped in Seattle and then flown in.

As long as the planes could fly, I was OK. I still remember a legislator who went to Anchorage, but then couldn't get back to Juueau. He made three trips between Anchorage and Seattle before he was finally able to land at Sitka and hop a ferry back to Juneau. Unfortunately, they didn't have frequent flyer plans in those days.

Whether you are an armchair traveler or planning a trip to Southeastern, you will want to read Red & Blue. Judy also wrote Alaska Travel Planning Guide: Help for the Independent Traveler, which is filled with knowledge she gained planning independent tours to Alaska for travelers.

Red & Blue: a Memoir of Two Alaskan Tour Guides sells for $14.95 paperback at Amazon.

The fine print: The Federal Trade Commission requires me to tell you that Judy sent me an autographed copy of her book. I also am listed under "acknowlgements" because I made suggestions in an early draft of the book.