Back in Seattle again | Bathroom dog | Beeen eating | Blueberries in the rain

Here you can see our 17-year-old dog, Buffy, checking out the most enormous motel bathroom I've ever seen. It was so big it had a telephone, sauna and hot tub. (Just kidding about the sauna and hot tub.) But it was big and it did have a telephone. It was in Fargo, North Dakota on our first night of the four-day drive from Madison to Seattle, and Buffy gave it the once over before settling onto one of the beds.

We're back in Seattle, now, but I was reminded of the photo this morning, when we failed to take Buffy outside in time for her morning pee, and she went into the bathroom and peed on the floor. "Bad dog," you're probably thinking, but think again. She COULD have peed in the bed or on the wall-to-wall carpet in the bedroom. But no, she jumped off the bed, went into the bathroom and peed on the floor. Granted, she didn't use the toilet and she did pee on the bath mat, but still. Pretty weird, right?

This post will finish up our summer trip photos before moving on to life and food in Seattle. We took a more northerly route for our return trip, and after Wisconsin and Minnesota, we hit North Dakota, and headed for Fargo. I can't remember what we ate in Fargo — no photos — which is probably not a good sign for what the food was like, but the scenery was cool.

The above photos were taken as we passed through the North Dakota Badlands.

In Montana, somewhere near Billings, we took a detour to view Pompey's Pillar. We couldn't actually enter the fee-required area of the park and walk to the pillar, because dogs weren't allowed, and I wasn't about to leave Buffy alone in a kennel area that the guide said was available someplace in the park. So we gazed upon it from a distance, and walked around in the free parts of the park. Had we been able to view the butte up close, we would have been able to see Native American petroglyphs, as well as the carved signature of William Clark.

William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame, climbed the butte, and etched his name and date of visit into the sandstone rock face on July 25, 1806. This is the only piece of tangible, still existing evidence, of Lewis and Clark's journey along this route, now known as The Lewis and Clark Historic Trail, which passes through 11 states. The purpose of the expedition, called the Corps of Discovery, was to search for a water route from the plains of the Midwest to the Pacific Ocean.

The 150 foot high butte was named by Clark after Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, whom Clark had nicknamed Pompy. Pompy was the infant son of Sacagewea, the Shoshoni woman who accompanied Lewis and Clark on the expedition, providing invaluable help to the explorers. Pompey translates to "little chief," in Shoshoni. In 1814, the rock was renamed Pompey's Pillar by Nicolas Biddle, who published an account of the expedition.

Above are two photos I took from the car window as we traveled through Montana; it's so beautiful there. Our second night was spent in Miles City, where we had greasy Chinese food, requiring the use of paper towels before we could eat.

On our third night we stayed in Missoula, and were looking forward to eating at a vegan Indian restaurant we'd read about on Happy Cow. Although still listed in the 2010 phone directory, unfortunately, when we got to the restaurant, it was gone, and in its place was a Mexican eatery. We ended up getting make-your-own salads from the The Good Food Store, and they were pretty tasty — probably a healthier option, too, but I was disappointed. Actually, I was in a really bad mood.

On our last day we entered Eastern Washington and stopped at one of my favorite places to stretch and take photos — the Columbia River Basin.

I still feel squeamish when I think about the boy of about 12 whom I observed scrambling on the high, jagged cliffs, with a straight drop to the river. He was accompanied by his two teen-aged sisters, one of whom finally said, "do you realize you're on the edge of a cliff?" before leaving him and returning to the trail. The boy was wearing flip flops. And where was his mother? She was fiddling with her camera from a nice safe place.

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Home again
Once back in Seattle, it was pretty hard to get back into a routine of cooking after so much eating out. It was not just too hard to do the cooking, it was nearly impossible to even think of anything to cook.

In situations like this, I often opt for a brothy bowl of noodles, mushrooms, tofu, kale, potatoes, and carrots.

My husband whipped up a big bowl of my favorite chickpea salad, that I ate for lunch several days in a row.

My son cooked a delicious lunch of broccoli and gyoza. He used a bag of frozen vegan gyoza from Trader Joe's.

We bought a gorgeous bunch of Chinese spinach at the farmers market yesterday, and made lentil soup with rice and spinach.

It was even better today for lunch when I added leftover corn cut from the cob, and avocado slices.

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Picking blueberries in the rain

If someone had invited me to go blueberry picking on a rainy day last year, I probably would have declined. I associate picking fruit with sunshine and warm days. But after a year in rain city, I must have adapted slightly, because yes, I did go blueberry picking in the rain. I didn't have an umbrella, but I did wear a rain jacket. Blueberry picking is tedious because the berries are so darn small. It takes forever to accumulate a reasonable amount in the bucket. My hands were wet and cold by the time we left, and my bucket was a sad, empty thing. I managed to freeze two quarts, but that was far less than I'd hoped. Maybe if the sun shines again, I'll go back to Mercer Slough Blueberry Farm in Bellevue. It seems to be in a public park, which I can't quite figure out.

You can see there were lots of ripe berries on the bushes, but picking them is slow going because of their small size. It seemed that no matter how much I picked, the bucket remained nearly empty. I had visions of picking a supply for the winter, but that would have required more hours and patience than I could manage. We used to easily pick 30 pounds or more of strawberries, and I didn't realize how different it was to pick blueberries.

Blueberries have the highest antioxidant capacity of all fruits and are recognized for their positive effects on heart health, lowering cholesterol and strengthening the immune system. They have also been studied for their ability to reduce stomach fat. Besides their health benefits, they're delicious additions to smoothies, breakfast cereal, muffins, cobblers and other desserts, as well as a low-calorie (80 calories per cup) snack eaten out-of-hand.

The farm uses "organic practices" whatever that is, and from the looks of things, they don't use slug pesticides. There was a slug convention taking place in the fields, and Pacific NW slugs are impressive.

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