PNW Road Trip: Day 2 - Wanapum-Lymans-Seattle

Welcome to Day #2 of our road trip from Sheridan, WY to the PNW!

Ah, road signs... we adored many things about Washington State, but their road signage wasn't one of them. When it came to giving an adequate heads up or marking street names, WA seems to follow what my college communications professor called The COIK Principle: "COIK" = "Clear Only If Known." And since it was all new territory to us and definitely not known, and we don't have GPS, we wore more baffled looks and executed more bat turns than we'd have liked! (It wasn't just Washington, we had issues with Missoula, too! And while I'm the first to admit I have no sense of direction, BW was a highly trained and skilled USAF navigator so I'm pretty sure it wasn't our fault). :-)

Anyway, our whining about Washington's inadequate signs began when we crossed the state line from Idaho the day before. I'd intended to get a photo of it like I did the giant welcoming Idaho sign, but we got a foreshadowing of things to come when we saw the barely noticeable (and completely unphotographable) "entering Washington" sign. It was on the left side in the median (who puts them there on a 70mph Interstate?) and might - MIGHT - have measured 18"x24". Washington was far more friendly and welcoming than their official welcoming sign would lead one to believe!

But the little town of George (get it? I love that!) did a much better job 150 miles later...

Frankly, it wasn't till George's exit sign that I realized the highway number background

was George Washington's profile instead of just a random blob! :-)

I also thought their water tower was clever in its simplicity and clarity (and I like to think I know a good SkyWatch candidate when I see one, lol)...

Or when I see another one! ;-) ...

Wind farm near the Columbia River

Our friend Andrea in Seattle sent me an email the day before we left home that suggested "stopping at the Columbia River Gorge in Eastern WA. It's kind of a rest stop (with no facilities) but it is very beautiful to walk the paths leading to the cliffs overlooking the river. You have to actually walk down, not just look from the parking area. The vegetation is more like what you'd expect in New Mexico than Wash. — very desert-like and beautiful. I don't think you can access the area on your way home so try to stop. It's worth it!"

And so we did, and she was right! These next few photos are from our 30-minute stopover overlooking the Columbia River and Gingko Petrified Forest/Wanapum State Parks in the Wanapum Recreational Area. We were glad Andrea told us about it, otherwise we'd have driven right past the turnoff to it (I doubt I need to mention how discretely it was marked)...

The informational sign at this spot identified the winding dirt road below as a remnant of an early day "post road," the pre-railroad dirt (and later macadam) roads built for the distribution of US mail, and went on to say, "The first roads in this area were constructed in about 1918 and followed the contour of the hillside down to a ferry landing." This road served until 1930, when an improved highway was constructed.

And do you know what this is?...

Why, a fork in the road, of course! Every road trip comes upon one eventually. ;-)
(Sorry, couldn't resist!)

It was still morning but already getting to be hot and hazy, yet I still think this was a lovely scene looking down the Columbia River past the Vantage Bridge (which we crossed shortly after resuming our trip)...

The Columbia, meanwhile, flows on past Wanapum State Park, Yakima Training Center, and then winds around the notorious DOE Hanford Site where dreadful things threaten it, but thankfully devoted people are working diligently to protect it. 

Speaking of devoted people working diligently to protect what's important... we stopped in Ellensburg for a wonderful visit (and delicious lunch) with our friends Howard and Willow Jeane Lyman...

We've known Howard and Willow Jeane since August 2000 when we met them through our neighbor Vistara, who's known them for decades from their mutual hometown of Great Falls, MT. The day we met and spoke to Howard is the day we went vegan, so how appropriate that I'm getting to post this on the first day of our "veganniversary" month! :-)

Howard and Willow Jeane are not only wonderful people and generous hosts, they also have a delightful home and garden that we really enjoyed getting to see. Willow Jeane is an extremely talented and prolific quilter (as is her daughter Laura, who owns a huge quilt shop in Billings, MT), so I wasn't surprised to see that she has a fantastic and colorful quilting room which I photographed not only for this post but also for my friend Jo (aka AdventureJo), also a quilter extraordinaire...

Willow Jeane's impressive "fabric stash"

Note her prize ribbons (probably only a small sampling!), and her ironing board cover, because here's a closeup of the same fabric, designed by her local quilt guild and also used for her sewing machine cover...

The ladies all represent the guild members, with words and phrases that have personal meaning to them. Of course, the words "Road Trip" jumped right out at me! :-)

This gorgeous quilt, which rightfully has pride of place in the Lyman's living room, took Willow Jeane about 2 years to complete, though she said she set it aside from time to time when she "got sick of it." I understand, I've got cross stitch projects like that. Heck sometimes this blog is like that! :-) ...

Here's the beautiful spread that Willow Jeane and her sister (who was there on her annual summer visit from Great Falls) had prepared for us! Lots of local organic produce - including two varieties of heirloom tomatoes - from the Ellensburg Farmer's Market, lemon-blueberry scones with homemade preserves, breakfast casserole, and crispy hash browns. Need I say it was all incredibly delicious? Didn't think so...

Willow Jeane was kind enough to share her recipes for the lemon-blueberry scones and breakfast casserole (pictured below on the left), both of which you'll find here. She also passed along her great tip for putting the crispy "brown" in oil-free hashbrowns (pictured on the right): Grate cooked & cooled potatoes. Toss with onion granules and bake on parchment paper for an hour or so. It's the onion granules that brown so you need to cover the potatoes well...

We filled our plates (with the first round of helpings!) and took them outside to dine al fresco under their shady Wisteria and Virginia Creeper-covered arbor (a bit of which is visible on the right) in their lush and lovely back yard they created from bare dirt and rock since moving here seven years ago...

I loved this beautiful suncatcher mobile under the arbor, made by a local artist from found bits of glass and a piece of driftwood...

All good things must end, so after a very fun visit we had to grudgingly depart and finish our drive to Seattle, where we planned to stock up on Remedy Teas (which I'm addicted to thanks to gifts of it from my friend Rose!), check into our hotel, and then meet our friend Mike for some fun activities (like a ride on the Seattle Great Wheel) before our 6:30 dinner reservations at Sutra. But we left the Lyman's an hour later than we'd planned, and shortly afterward got stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic driving through the Cascades at an average of 2mph (when it moved at all). So instead of arriving in Seattle at 3pm, we barely made it in time to grab the tea, check into the hotel and make it to the restaurant on time. Such a bummer, especially since it was the only time we were going to get to spend with Mike, whom we hadn't seen since he stayed with us during his move from Portland, ME to Seattle 10 years ago! Oh well, all you can do (besides cuss the traffic jam, which I did impressively) is roll with it. At least the scenery was even more impressive than my cussing! :-)

On our way to our whirlwind stop at Remedy Teas, I got my first glimpse of the iconic Space Needle and insisted that BW detour a block and stop so I could get this photo - dinner reservations be damned!...

I'm smitten with the Space Needle, so you'll be seeing much more of it in the next posts!

We stayed at the Watertown Inn, which was wonderfully located and surprisingly affordable (thanks in no small part to their generous military discount), not to mention clean and comfortable, friendly and attractive...

But the best part was our room's awesome views!...

Seattle's skyline, with the Space Needle on the right

and Mt. Rainier (taken through our window at dawn the next day with my telephoto)

We had a few minutes to gape out the windows and snap the photos, hurl water on our faces and toothpaste at our teeth, and then it was off to meet with Mike - who'd been parked outside patiently waiting for us - and zip off to Sutra...

BW and Mike with their biggest fan. *snork*

Sutra's pre-set five-course gourmet vegan dinner menu, whose content and pricing varies daily, was a relatively extravagant ($40 per person + tax and tip) experience that interested BW more than it did me. As a simple woman with more frugal dining habits, I'd had my heart set on eating at PizzaPi for years - since Mike used to live just down the block from it and would torment me with emails about it - but since Sutra gets rave reviews and is a very popular and pretty unique dining experience, when Mike suggested it for dinner that night we agreed.

Sutra is a very small place. Only open for dinner and with just 1-2 seatings a night, reservations are pretty much mandatory and they turn people away on a regular basis. Their web site says they can comfortably accommodate 35, but we take issue with the "comfortably" part. In their defense, it was 92º in Seattle that day, which doesn't happen often and so they weren't equipped for it. No a/c, no windows that open, and that fan you see in the photo with BW and Mike? Just a prop, really - the door was closed when everyone was seated and there were no fans operating that we could see or feel. And it didn't help that they served us warm water! The place was filled to capacity and we were squeezed into a tiny table in the far back corner right near the kitchen, which is open to the dining area as you can see from this photo I took from my seat... 

Hot as it was where I was sitting, I can't imagine working over that hot stove!

The dining room has high ceilings and hardwood floors, so when it's filled with the noise of chattering diners, the extraneous background music, and the bang and clatter of the kitchen, the acoustics are awful. We had to strain to hear each other and make ourselves heard over the din. Add to that the stifling heat, warm water and cramped seating, and it wore us out. So, low marks from us for ambience and comfort, at least on a hot summer evening.

As for the food... 

All the dishes were creative, interesting, beautifully plated and very tasty medleys of textures, colors and flavors. We love that it's all vegan (of course), organic and local, and prepared fresh daily. 

In the interest of space, I created a collage of the meal's five courses. But those of you who enjoy oogling food porn (and you know who you are!) can click on each course title for the larger version. I've also typed up that night's menu verbatim, but please don't ask me what most of these ingredients are (e.g. shunkyo radish, scape, urfa, aprium, mofongo), for I was clueless in Seattle. nyuck-nyuck!...

Tonight's Menu

First & Second Course (plated together)

English Pea-Hempcream-Yuzu Soup served aside a Salad of Frisee-Shunkyo Radish-Pickled Scape-Sonata Cherry & Candied Sunflower with a Lemon Balm Dressing

Third Course

Miso-Urfa Biber-Zucchini-Tokyo Turnip "Lasagna" with Grilled Aprium and a 

Sea Bean-Arame-Shiso Slaw finished with Truffle Oil and a Balsamic Reduction

Fourth Course

Fava Bean & Fig Roasted Cauliflower-Spinach-Parsley Mofongo with Cashew Cheese Stuffed Grey Morel, a Chile-Saffron-Saskatoon Sauce & Fried Caper Berry

Fifth Course

Pistachio Brittle Crusted Cacao-Coconut-Rose Tort and Fresh Strawberry Blueberry

Sounds pretentious (or elegant, depending on your perspective) as all get-out, doesn't it? (But I'm sorry, am I the only one who can never hear "fava bean" without immediately thinking of Hannibal Lecter?!) Anyway, point is it was all mighty tasty, but my favorites were absolutely the meal's bookends - the soup and dessert. That soup may not look like much, but it was the best soup I've ever had! We all agreed. (Which is quite an accomplishment on the chef's part, because who wants soup when it's 125º??) I want to weep when I think that I'll probably never get to taste it again - if only they'd ship me a barrel of it every month! (Or at least share the recipe!) The dessert, subbed with blueberries when it was discovered the strawberries had sold out, was as amazing as it looks and sounds. I can't imagine it tasting any better with the strawberries. So, high marks from us for the food, very high marks for the dessert, and stratospheric marks for the soup! 

After dinner Mike took us on a little tour of the neighborhoods between Sutra and the Watertown Inn before dropping us off there at 9pm, with promises from all of us that we won't let another decade go by before we get together again! We got back to our room in time to enjoy seeing the city lights all aglow as full darkness fell, but since we had another very full day ahead of us we crashed shortly thereafter. So I'm afraid the only scenes of Seattle nightlife you're going to get from me is the pretty neon mural in the hotel lobby! :-)

To view skies and skylines by day and by night, 

you know where to go!...

Happy Birthday wishes to you on Sunday, AdventureJo! :-)

Other PNW Road Trip Posts:

Day #1, Part 1: Butte

Day #1, Part 2: Missoula-Idaho-Spokane
Day #3, Part 1: Seattle's Chihuly Garden and Glass

PNW Road Trip: Missoula-Idaho-Spokane

Welcome to Part 2 of Day #1 of our road trip from Sheridan, WY to the Pacific Northwest!

 

After our lunch in Butte, we continued on to Missoula where, despite only being halfway to our day's destination, we stopped to see the Carousel for Missoula. As we made our way through Missoula's downtown to the carousel, we passed this Studebaker wall mural...

... which proved prophetic, because just a couple blocks away in the carousel's parking lot, we happened upon the tail end of a classic car rally! And the first classic that met our eye had Molly's name written all over it! (Well, not literally - literally it had Route 66 stickers all over it - which also had Molly's name written all over them!) :-)

1959 Ford Ranchero & vintage Airstream

Of course we had to spend time among the vintage cars, parked prettily next to Caras Park (hmmm, a carousel and classic cars by Caras Park - this calls for some carousing!) :-)

1955 Chevy

A handsome lineup of oldies but goodies 

L-R: '54 Ford, '59 BW :-), '57 Chevy, '56 Chevy, '56 Thunderbird

And then we finally wandered over to the carousel, our purpose for stopping in Missoula to begin with (we are easily distracted, lol), where I didn't take it for a spin but did enjoy choosing and photographing a few of my favorite critters. You can read about all of the carousel's critters & chariots here. There's a Clydesdale named "Bud" that I didn't notice, but in reading about the ponies learned was "adopted" by Bunts and June Watkins, long-time close family friends of my late grandparents! Bunts owned a beer distribution business in their hometown of Havre (and later in Missoula and Spokane), so "Bud" the Clydesdale was an appropriate pony for him to sponsor!...

L-R: "Cannonball," "Snapples," "American Beauty"

"Paint"

"Catch a painted pony let the spinning wheel spin"...

~Blood, Sweat & Tears, "Spinning Wheel"

"Scafti"

The sign on his ear says, "Only children are allowed to ride on Scafti. It's a balance thing." 
Do you think if I'd informed them I'm an only child, they'd have let me ride him? ;-)

After enjoying the cars and the carousel, we wandered along the path by the riverside and took time to smell the roses growing there...

Clark's Fork River

It was a beautiful but very hot day, so several others were enjoying the river by actually being in it... swimming, tubing (see the two in the photo above?), kayaking, and - get this - surfing the rapids!

I'd crack my head open on one of those rocks on my first try. 

As with riding Scafti, "it's a balance thing!" LOL

From Missoula, a beautiful drive through the Bitterroot Range and Lolo Pass brought us to...

I was more excited about gaining that hour than I was about entering a new state! :-)

We pulled over and I popped up through the sunroof to snap this evening telephoto shot of Lake Coeur d'Alene 

The drive through Idaho was really beautiful, but very brief - we were, afterall, crossing the state's skinny panhandle. So it wasn't long before we were in Spokane, eager for dinner at Boots Bakery and Lounge, an all-vegan eatery that just opened last year...

It was about 8:15 on a lovely evening and we were tempted to dine al fresco, but as you can see outdoor seating was very limited and being a Friday night in downtown Spokane - with the huge annual Spokane Hoopfest going on just down the block - it was very loud! So we ate inside the fun old building (you can see a bit of BW in the booth on the left)...

You choose your food from a deli case by the register where that customer is standing. The "lounge" portion of "Boots Bakery & Lounge" is a small area in the back, where a man was playing very pretty acoustical guitar music to the delight of a small audience gathered there. 

Unfortunately my dinner photos came out blurry, but I'm sharing the one of my plate anyway because while all of the food was absolutely delicious, their mac and cheese was the best I've ever had (and I think I make a pretty awesome mac-and-cheese if I do say so myself!) I loved Boots' mac and cheese so much I got more to go for eating the next day, but ate every bite of it later that night in our motel. And it nearly killed me to drive past Spokane on our return trip home at 7:30 in the morning - too early to get more Boots Mac and Cheese! (Which was probably a good thing, since I'd have wanted to bring several pounds of it home with me)...

The "Power Greens" salad was also awesome, and the Spinach Pesto Penne
 was really delicious too, but the mac and cheese ruled! 

We also bought treats from their vegan bakery, of course! :-) Two for dessert later that night in our motel room and two for breakfast the next morning with our coffee. These were dessert - the one on the left was peanut butter chocolate and it was okay, but the one on the right was unforgettable - a lemon coconut bar. OH, MY!!! I'll be dreaming of their mac & cheese and lemon coconut bars till I can get back to Spokane!

Things were a little hectic the next morning so I failed to photograph our coffee cakes (they looked pretty similar to the peanut butter chocolate one, on top anyway!) but BW's was banana pecan and mine was orange pistachio ginger. Again - YUM!!! In addition to coffee cakes and bars, Boots also makes vegan scones and muffins.

The room where we left all our coffee cake crumbs was in the Best Western Plus Bronco Inn in Ritzville, WA. We were zonked when we got there and finished the dreaded bag drag to our room a little before 11 that night - 17 hours and 740 miles (and a few pounds of great food) after leaving home that morning! Having no special expectations of our chain motel accommodations beyond hoping it would be clean and relatively quiet, we were very pleasantly surprised by how large and comfy our room was (as well as clean and quiet!) And it was also charmingly decorated with an Americana quilt theme especially appropriate so close to the 4th of July...

The second leg of our drive to Seattle the next day would be much shorter - but it would be another very full and fun day! So, Day #2 coming up soon!

Other PNW Road Trip posts:

Day #1, Part 1: Butte, MT
Day #2: Wanapum-Lymans-Seattle
Day #3, Part 1: Seattle's Chihuly Garden and Glass

PNW Road Trip: Day 1 - Butte, MT

Welcome to Part #1 of Day #1 of our summer road trip to the Pacific Northwest, a vacation we took in part to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary this June. In two weeks we drove about 2400 miles, visited some beautiful country in four states and two countries, did and saw lots of interesting stuff, and between our Rebel, Kodak EasyShare and new iPad we took over 2000 photos. So needless to say, this is the first of many photo-intensive vacation posts! I hope to post the last one by Christmas. :-)

We left Sheridan at 6:45am on Saturday, June 29th, stopping briefly in Billings, MT for a quick breakfast from The Good Earth Co-Op. Our next stop was in Butte, MT for lunch, a town we'd never visited before, but one we found quite intriguing!

We begin with a view of part of downtown Butte (rhymes with "cute") as seen from the Visitors Center...

The M on the hillside, created in 1910, is for "Miners" (Butte's an old mining town as you'll soon see, and home to a college formerly known as Montana State School of Mines), while the red brick clock tower, built in 1916, was originally the railroad station and is now a TV station (KXLF TV). Apparently it's destined to always be a station of some sort! :-)

I also took this next photo from the Visitors Center. Butte sits very near the Continental Divide (I'd have photographed the sign if we hadn't flown by it at 75mph!), is the hometown and burial site of motorcycle daredevil Evel Kneivel, is known for its mining history (and resulting EPA Superfund Site) and Victorian architecture - and is, as you can see, surrounded by some beautiful scenery...

But the town's landscape also bears the ugly scars of its mining history, a history which gave it the nickname "The Richest Hill on Earth" and made it wealthy during its boom years, but left it toxic after more than a century of mining and smelting...

If the sight of the scarred hillside didn't clue you in to Butte's emphasis on mining, some of its street names - Gold, Silver, Copper, Iron, Quartz, Granite, Agate, Platinum, Mercury, Aluminum, Diamond, Ruby and Pearl - might. Starting with gold in 1864, Butte has also mined (and often smelted) silver, copper, lead, manganese, zinc, and molybdenum from over 500 underground mines and four open pit mines, including the infamous Berkley Pit. This 100+ years of mining activity has left groundwater, surface water and soils in the area contaminated with arsenic, sulphuric acid, and heavy metals including copper, zinc, cadmium and lead, caused fish kills in the rivers and created potential health threats from contact with and ingestion of contaminated soil, surface water, groundwater or inhaling contaminated air. This is why it's one of the largest EPA Superfund sites in the world, with Berkley Pit being the largest and most expensive portion.

My photos that show the mine area (which is now owned by Atlantic Richfield and is still active, though on a much smaller scale) are not nearly as dramatic as the Google Maps satellite image. Appalling what we do to Mother Earth, our fellow creatures, and ourselves and future generations in the name of profits.

Some of the money made during Butte's mining heydays was spent on the construction of some impressive buildings, built mostly from the 1880s to the roaring '20s, which today are currently in various states of grandeur, disrepair, neglect, and/or restoration - and which will be (with the exception of our lunch) the focus of the remainder of our visit to Butte...

Mother Lode Theater

Built in 1923 as a Masonic Temple and converted to a movie theater during the Depression,

after a $3 million renovation in 1996 it was renamed the Mother Lode Theater.

Chim Chim Cher-ee

I have no idea what the history or function of this building is, I just thought its tall chimney and old brick had character, especially against that backdrop!

The Arts Chateau

We had no clue what this place was when we first drove by it, but thought it must be the Copper King Mansion (more on that shortly). We were close, but didn't learn till we got home and I was putting this post together that it was indeed built (in 1898) by the Copper King, William Andrews Clark, but it was for his son Charles. The 26-room house - modeled after a French Chateau that Charles had stayed in on his honeymoon and built in part by French craftsmen brought to Butte for the purpose - now serves as a community arts center, museum and gallery called The Arts Chateau.

An example of one of Butte's beautiful old buildings that's seen better days. The apartment on the left is occupied, the one on the right is vacant. We hope this building is slated for repair rather than terminal composting, but found it hard to tell with some of Butte's buildings if they were on their way up or on their way out.

We passed the above building on our way to The Hummingbird Café for lunch...

A vegan-friendly oasis that we were pleasantly surprised to find through Happy Cow, we were equally surprised to find it quite busy when we arrived, given how quiet the town seemed, though once we got our food we understood its popularity! It has a fun artsy/hippie/bohemian vibe that we enjoyed, and was much bigger than it looked... you can see one back room through the door to the left, but they continued on beyond that and ended in a cozy little outdoor courtyard with a couple of tables (which is where we'll take our food to eat next time we visit!) :-)

Service was friendly but slow, so while BW mapped out our next meal destination on the iPad I took my camera on a quick walkabout to photograph more of Butte's architecture. So we'll return to The Hummingbird for our sandwiches in a bit, after we've feasted our eyes on a couple more historic dwellings...

Another apartment building, this time in better shape

An example of the architectural diversity on which Butte has long prided itself

There's nothing like a window full of skeletons in June to catch the eye, and being a great lover of Halloween (though one who monotonously takes down her decorations on Nov 1!), I had to snap this photo. :-)

I took this shot with my telephoto just before re-entering restaurant, thinking these were more miner-baron mansions. And maybe they were once, but now they're buildings on the campus of Montana Tech of the University of Montana, originally the Montana School of Mines when it was founded in 1900.

And now it's time to dig up some minerals of a different sort, for lunch is served. :-)

I ordered the portobello (or as they spell it, "portabella") sandwich with a side of organic red roasted potatoes...

...while BW ordered the T.L.T. (made with their own homemade tempeh bacon) and the same side o' spuds... 

And then we swapped sandwich halves. We both agreed that both sandwiches were very tasty, but the T.L.T. was far and away our favorite! 

After eating our sandwiches and sharing a lemonade, it was time to do a little more exploring on foot and by car before leaving, especially since we were still trying to find the Copper King Mansion, and no one seemed to be able to tell us where it was! 

Love that second-story sunporch!

As you can see, a big thunderstorm was rolling in (it hit just as we left Butte). Which got us wondering - with all that metal - especially highly conductive copper - in the ground there, how many lightning strikes do you reckon they get? Don't know, but we left town in the nick of time that day!

Neighbors

Another second-story sunporch on the jauntily colored house on the left, and an intriguing third-story recessed porch and the first all-glass turret I've ever seen on the house on the right, which also appears to be getting a new porch railing soon!

This house, loaded with beautiful stained glass windows, was right across a side street from the Copper King Mansion (yep, finally found it, so it's coming up shortly!) 

Greek Revival

This home was probably the stateliest private residence we came upon (and it was for sale, though now I can't find a listing for it on the realtor's web site). The columns, portico and upper railings are all lovely and impressive, as is that handsome chimney! But now check out what was right across the street...

Needs Revival!

A contrast that pretty much sums up our impression of Butte! It's a city of antipodes - wealth and poverty, preservation and dilapidation, pristine beauty and monstrous devastation, cowboys and miners and artists and hippies - all living cheek to jowl. As I said, it's an intriguing town, and one we plan to spend more time in one day... maybe even springing for a night in this place (if they'll serve us a vegan breakfast!) - the hard-to-find-but-worth-the-search Copper King Mansion...

William Andrews Clark was one of the three principal developers of copper mining in Butte known as "the Copper Kings." The original cost of his 34-room Copper King Mansion, built from 1884-1888, is estimated at about a half-million dollars - or about a half day's income for Clark. By 1900, Clark had amassed a personal fortune estimated at $50,000,000 and was considered one of the wealthiest men in the world. In 1917 he added an addition to the mansion, but the cost of it is unknown.

The mansion has been privately owned by the Cote family for four generations, but is publicly accessible via tours or overnight stays in their five B&B guest rooms.

I imagine there are rather commanding views from this window! 

Speaking of which...

We bid farewell to Butte with this last look at the town, the mine-scape, and the mountains from the grounds of the Montana Tech campus (which you may recall seeing from outside the Hummingbird Café in an earlier photo). Now it's time to outrun the thunderstorms and head for Missoula, Idaho and Spokane! See you there in my next post! :-)

Meanwhile, see more of the world (and its skies, stormy and otherwise) with a visit to...

Other PNW Road Trip Posts:

Day #1, Part 2: Missoula-Idaho-Spokane

Day #2: Wanapum-Lymans-Seattle

Day #3, Part 1: Seattle's Chihuly Garden and Glass