Our drive out of Yakima took us through some of the county’s largest “hop” fields…why the Yakima valley???? I have no idea but they hung high above us as we drove the secondary roads to our next destination, Soap Lake. (Right now, I would love to have a picture of the hops but we didn’t take the time to stop and take…damn!) This is the first time that we have been in a campground that was owned by Western Horizons (the membership only campground club that we bought into a couple of years ago) and then sold to a private ownership and changed into an “open camping” campground. We still have full “membership” access for 2008, but beyond that we’re just another camper. Oh well, we’ve had a second opportunity to search out the must see locations within 80 miles of the lake so I would say we’ve “been there”. Taking a little time to hit one of the beaches here at Soap Lake, we found this couple taking advantage of the "special" mud from the bottom the lake.
We were in Ephrata the other day and found out that they were having their annual “Ephrata Valley Music Festival”.
The weather couldn’t have been better and our personal schedule (schedule, I don’t remember having a schedule…) would allow us to grab some “booth food” and settle down to watch and listen to some great jazz and rock for the next few hours. As always when such a festival like this is going on, we went looking for the Farmers Market. We couldn’t go home without having stopped. On the way back to the campground, we came upon another "celebration". It was the annual "Bikers of Soap Lake" event.
That evening at the campground, we went out for a walk and soon found ourselves in conversation with a camper from Bellevue. His family had taken the tour bus from the campground to the “Light Show at Grand Coulee Dam”. He and his wife had immigrated to the US from India a number of years ago and now are raising their kids in Bellevue. Louise and I found our brief conversation with Richard very interesting and asked him to join us for a glass of wine up at our coach while his family was away enjoying the light show. Later Lou and I found ourselves invited to his “cabin” for dinner the next night. The dinner was described to be a “typical Indian” dinner consisting of a spicy rice dish, chicken, beef ribs. We had a wonderful evening. The host and his extended family Richards wife, Minni, Margret (Richards mother), Joseph his father, cousin, and her daughter both visiting from India.
All in all, after enjoying a great meal and wonderful conversations with some new friends, it made for an evening we won’t forget.