This is Part II of the Series “Road Tripping in Washington State” by genxchronicle.com
I’m visiting my brother Ken in Seattle for three weeks, and on Saturday we set out for our second excursion of my visit. Our first stop is Sushi Land in Redmond, a conveyor belt sushi restaurant chain popular on the West Coast. It’s a fantastic experience as the nigiri and maki sushi whirs past your seat on the belt and you can take whatever you want. Which we do.
We finish the sushi, which is great, and then we head east past the small rural towns of Duvall and Lake Marcel. It’s all rolling hills, meadows with horses, there are some beautiful Chestnut horses, and we’re on a country road, and who cares where it leads, it’s beautiful.
We take a right at Ames Lake Road, and the trees are hanging over the highway, you can barely see the sky it’s so enveloped in a green canopy of trees. We follow a super windy road that curves on and on forever.
There are lots of private roads here, and so we decide to head toward Carnation, Washington, population 1,995. That’s like two buildings on my block in Queens.
We’re purring along, taking the curves at 40 mph.
We pass deer crossing and moose crossing signs, and a tractor crossing sign. It’s really interesting to me, because you just don’t see those kinds of signs in NYC. The Cascade Mountains are a snow-capped mass off in the distance.
We pass a giant field laid out with huge white barrels. It looks to me like an ancient Celtic ritual where they’re waiting for the gods to come down or something. But really it’s probably just hay or some other type of agriculture related phenomenon, and I’m just a city boy imagining things.
We cross a river on a cute little bridge, and the smell is of freshly cut grass in summer camp.
We pass a biker sitting alongside the river with his bike. He’s got his biking gear, and he’s contemplating life or whatever the hell he’s doing, who knows, but he’s found a great spot.
As we enter Carnation the Cascade Mountains are off in the distance, there’s a Sandy’s Espresso sign on a barn, and a “Plants” sign on the side of the road.
We stop at a gas station to use the bathroom. A guy buys two packs of red box hardcore looking non-light cigarettes. I quit smoking about four years ago after 25 years as a smoker, and I’m so happy that world is behind me.
We pull out of the gas station and we see an elk crossing sign for the next 4 miles. Ha! You just don’t see that on Astoria Boulevard waiting for the subway in Queens. You just don’t. So it’s refreshing.
We keep cruising past rolling hills, meadows, and wide-open sky.
It’s like there’s a green rainbow of warmth enveloping the road and the car, because there are so many trees of different heights and sizes and colors.
We pass a horseback riding crossing sign. OK. Gotcha. No horses in Queens either.
We pass a farm stand sign for fresh cherries, two dollars, on the side of the road. American flags are flying.
Ken pulls over to buy cherries, and he ends up with two huge bags of cherries, $10 each. They look beautiful. There are Raniers in yellow and orange, and Bings in purple rouge. They taste delicious and succulent and sweet. They’re lovely.
As we keep rolling along, the purr of Ken’s Hyundai Sonata provides the backdrop to our journey. Thank you South Korea, you make great cars.
We ride on, past tall pine trees on Route 202 that hide secluded homes in a forest. The homes look beautiful, imposing, wealthy, decadent, and fabulous. LA chic meets rural Washington State.
We drive through downtown Snoqualmie, near Snoqualmie Falls. There are lots of tourists and tourist shops. There are also ancient railway cars lined up on the side of the road looking cool and historic.
We pass a towering mountain on the left hand side, trees filling it up until the top third, which is bear with raw naked rock. It could be clear-cutting, it could be a natural formation, you just don’t know.
Next we go through North Bend, another small town in the Cascades.
We see a sign on the left hand side of the road that says “Big Dogg’s Firearms.” This Interesting. I’m not into guns at all, and I mean not at all. Especially since I grew up in a large city plagued by gun violence, namely New York in the 70’s and 80’s. The recent school shooting tragedies in Parkland and Santa Fe also resonate. So we roll on.
Next we’re on a winding Cascade foothill mountain road, and we pass a lonely solo biker along the side of the road wearing a green t-shirt and grey shorts. He looks down on his luck. There are all types of people in Washington State. It attracts some of the live and let live Alaska-type folks, if you will.
Another winding mountain road, and then the middle fork of the Snoqualmie river opens up before us. It’s beautiful, fast rushing water, full of whitecaps.
We stop by a road cut out and follow a trail to a campsite called Champion Beach. We go down to the Snoqualmie river, and it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s just so quiet and peaceful, with a rocky shore.
Ken and I lay on the hard rocks by the shore and just chill. This is about as far from 30th Avenue in Queens as I’ve been in a long time, both in distance as well as nature and culture.
We go back to the main path, then follow an even narrower path overgrown with prickly trees that hinder our way. Ken gets a cut a little by some thorn bushes. I worry about bears for a minute, but Ken tells me bear attacks are extremely rare. He also tells me how to fight off a cougar. OK then, thanks Ken, but I was actually thinking about bears. Cougar self-defense is OK too tho.
The narrow trail leads to a river overlook, which is incredibly magnificent, with a view of the Snoqualmie River in all its glory. There’s a guy in overalls fly fishing in the water below us, and a mountain road snaking above us.
I hear the soft rush and hum of the river, I see the swirls and eddies, and the visions of the fly fisherman, and it’s all so incredibly Edward Hopper and Americana.
I don’t ever want to leave.
It’s 7 p.m. now as we make our way away from Champion Beach and head back West towards Seattle. The sun is lower in the sky, and it reflects magically off the Cascade mountainside. The whole spectrum of nature’s colors is arrayed before us.
We pass a few small housing developments, with beautiful paved streets and lovely medium- sized houses. They have basketball hoops in the yards. It’s all so utopian American.
Then more horses in the meadows lining the road.
Finally we stop at a Safeway about 15 miles outside Seattle to get water and diet soda, and then we stop at a Blimpie sub shop in a strip mall outside North Bend.
A couple of South Asian kids make our sandwiches. They’re actually American kids really, when I think about it. Ken and I share a large Club sandwich, which is ham, turkey, and cheese, with veggies and sauces. We also share a Blimpie Best, which has a lot of Italian meats like Mortadella and Capicola.
The teenagers ask us where we’re from, and we say New York. But Ken lives in Seattle, we tell them, and we both love it out here. I tell them I visit Seattle a lot.
Ken asks where they’re from, and one of them gets a weary look. I’m guessing he thinks were going to say are you from India or Pakistan or some South Asian country like that? He says they’re both from North Bend, but one lived in California until he was four.
We say that’s pretty cool, we love it around here, it’s really beautiful. In fact we were just hanging out by the river, we tell them.
The thought crosses my mind that it’s incredible how much America is changing so fast. I think of South Asian kids growing up in North Bend, Washington state. I mean they’re ethnically South Asian, but they’re just American kids who grew up here. It really is the Browning of America, and it’s pretty cool.
In the old days their families would have stayed in Queens, or maybe ventured to New Jersey. But now they go everywhere, which is great. It’s a fitting end to our day.
One of the kids tells me he’s been to New York, he thought it was pretty crazy, and pretty loud, and pretty busy. I get the feeling he didn’t love it. I tell him I hear you, it is pretty crazy in New York. I like it out here though, that’s why I come and visit a lot, my man.
Now it’s later that night, around 3:57 a.m., and I’m back in my condo. I ate the two large Blimpies with Ken at his house, and also an edible marijuana chocolate, because it’s legal in Washington State. I also had several whiskeys at Ken’s. We were just unwinding and decompressing from the day.
So now I’m chilling on the couch listening to country music. I turn the fireplace on, and Doodle the cat, who lives at the condo I’m cat sitting for, becomes absolutely mesmerized by the flames. He’s such a slow, languid, semi-lazy but cool cat.
But once I turn the fireplace on he walks right up to it and stands within a foot of it and just stares. He’s fascinated. He’s totally captivated by it. The flames are enthralling him. I don’t know what he’s thinking or what it means to him, but it’s really interesting.
But the fire mesmerizes me too, it really does. So maybe humans and cats share a primal gravitational pull towards flames or fire. We probably do. Fire represents heat, and sustenance, and cooking, and warmth, and light. Humans and cats aren’t that different, we really aren’t.
Finally around 4:30 am I crash out and go to sleep. All in all, our second Washington State road trip turned out to be a smashing success. We saw the country, we saw the mountains, we saw the river, we saw the hills, and we saw the meadows and the horses. These are all things I could never do in Queens.
So I’m happy, and content, and as I drift off to sleep, visions of rolling green fields and meadows pass through my mind. I’m at peace, finally, 3,000 miles from the city of my birth.
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