Old Retired Guy Blog
Sept 24 - 29, 2006
|
Eastern Washington (Page 1/4)[September 24] Since we're planning to move back to Wisconsin next
year we decided that we should try to see a few places in the Northwest that we
had not yet seen in our 25 years in Portland. So, we packed our bags and headed
Our first stop was the Maryhill Art Museum. It's an interesting place that was built starting in 1914 by Samuel Hill, a wealthy (duh) businessman who planned to start a Quaker agricultural community. In addition to a great collection of works by Rodin, the museum also houses some wonderful work by Northwestern Native American tribes as well as traveling exhibits such as the collection of chess sets from around the world.
A short distance from the museum is a full-size replica of Stonehenge. Sam Hill built this as well. It's interesting to see not just because of the strange stone age monument that it replicates, but also because it was constructed as a memorial to the soldiers of Klickitat County, Washington who died in World War I. After leaving Maryhill and the Stonehenge Memorial we headed north on US 97 towards Ellensburg. We decided to make a quick stop in the city of Toppenish, the capital of the Yakima Indian Nation. This place is absolutely loaded with murals -- 70 so far. They even hold a "Mural-In-A-Day" celebration every year to ... well, I guess that's obvious.
Man, I must really be getting old because I actually enjoyed all of these places -- and there weren't even any car chase scenes or scantily-clad women (except for one of the Rodin sculptures).
Eastern Washington |
east
on I-84 to Biggs, OR, where we crossed the Columbia River into the State of
Washington. 
