Glorious Washington State

This week my work has taken me to the great Northwest yet again. Quite a pain-in-the schlep, from home in Florida. In fact, Tuesday's trip involved 3 flights - JAX - ATL - SLC - GEG (Jacksonville, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Spokane), a very long day of flying. But Washington is worth the trip.

Spokane is surrounded by "gentle" mountains. The environment is green, and the pines rise grandly from the hillsides. A cute little downtown with a great parks system and trails galore. After presenting in Spokane, I rode to Pasco, in South-Central Washington. I traveled a desert, including tumbleweed and views that went endlessly into the horizon. The sands gave way to more hillsides, covered with the vineyards that provide the Willamette Valley wines.Thursday evening, after the presentation in Pasco, it was a little prop flight to Seattle. We kept it pretty low, just skirting the tops of the Cascades, providing an incredible view of Mt. Rainier. It seemed that I could reach out the window and touch the breathtakingly immaculate white mountaintops. There's something so sexy about the way the mountains rise with their voluptuous curves and how they stand so tall against the horizon. Coming into Seattle, the Puget Sound nestles the downtown skyscrapers, and hosts mountain-topped islands in the distance. It is hard to imagine a more incredible landscape, all within the boundaries of a single state.