Population: 6,202 Elevation: 700
Another travel day. This one was through 100º weather. The heat dome has settled in again and it will be hot through the weekend. The smoke is mostly gone now.
We are traveling through the heart of Washington's central farmland.
One thing that is interesting about this area is that the farmers put signs on the fields telling you what is growing. We already recognized corn, but they tell you if it is sweet corn or grain corn. The crop rotation seems to be corn, grain, beans, and potatoes. Sometimes it's not very helpful. You can go passed orchards of 'Apples', then get to a farmer who puts up 'Gala Apples', 'Honeycrisp Apples', or 'Fuji Apples'. The worst offenders are the bean fields. They just say 'Beans'. Only one time did we see a sign that said 'Lima Beans'. Potatoes were always 'Potatoes'.
The grains are mostly wheat, alfalfa, and Timothy Grass. Once we saw a field of 'Rye (Whiskey)'. I guess they are telling us where the rye is going.
I expected more onions since we aren't that far from Walla Walla which is famous for sweet onions. We only saw one or two onion fields.
They largest orchards are apple orchards. They grown them so they are easy to pick. They take the branches and train them up into a large V shape. The pickers can reach around both branches instead of hunting through a tall tree.
Sometimes they get a little creative. One plowed field of dirt said 'Green Manure'. It made it sound like they grow manure. Another one was a field of horses that said 'Pasture'. The best was a golf course that said 'Turf Grass'.
There were some grapes in Quincy. Mostly they just said 'Grapes'. Only once did we see 'Concord Grapes'. Here around Prosser, they don't label the grapes. They are all attached to vineyards so you can drive up and try the wine and ask what the grapes are.
Our RV park is called Wine Country for a reason. They have wine tasting here most nights. Right down the road is an area with about 12 wine tasting places from the various wineries. We may go on a wine tasting tour or we may do wine crawl. Who knows.
Beer is also represented here. There are large fields of hops. They don't label them, but most are probably Cascade hops (which were developed here). If we do the wine tasting trip, they will also throw in breweries or distilleries if we want.
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