Thursday, August 14, 2003... sometime very late at night: Scot and I left on an extended recouperative leave of absence in his 1998 "black currant" Honda Accord (the six cylendar model). Departing Kirkland, we headed east out Interstate 90 toward Spokane. We barely made it forty miles or so before I made a groggy Executive Decision and pulled off for a nap. Sometime around seven in the morning of the fifteenth, better rested and itching to see the miles roll by, we got back on the road for Departure, Take Two. Veering south toward Yakima, we eventually crossed into...

OREGON!

where we stopped for gas. An evil surprise awaited us there: it was HOT! (definition one). As I stepped out of the car, the heat walloped me like a physical thing. I found myself unwilling to draw the hot air into my lungs and began coughing involuntarily. We scrambled for the air-conditioned comfort of the gas stations's quickie-mart to regroup and recover. Whose horrible idea was this? This kind of heat was crazy. All the potatoes would be baked before they even made it into the trucks! We fled quickly onward. We drove through uninteresting smallish hills with little on them but scrub and dry grasses. A single match could have leveled every structure in the county. What a sad existence. We stopped in Boise (which was kind of short, for a capital) at an outlet mall

I was pleasantly surprised by Spencer Spit State Park, however. We found the park almost entirely deserted. Out of the 30 campsites, I think perhaps three were occupied. We found a very nice spot that featured a nice grassy and shady area to pitch our tent, but which would