Walla Walla Washington Wheat

Jeff got up early, had breakfast and then waited for Dave and I (we slept an extra hour). We have everything down pat now. Loading and unloading is easy, ride the bicycle before breakfast every morning, continental breakfast, then on the bikes and go. There were 4 pretty new BMWs from Washington at the hotel last night. They looked clean so I assume they were just starting their trip and their beemers were more crotch rocket type bikes so I assume the trip will be short. One of them was the amazing new beemer that can go 200+ MPH (no thanks).
We climbed and went over Lolo Pass and then down through the Clearwater National Forest. This was a deja vu moment for me because I had ridden a motorcycle down this same pass 38 years ago with my old friend Pete Brewer. I had a crappy old Suzuki 550 "two smoke" and he had a Honda 750 4 cylinder. We did 10,000 miles in 7 weeks on that trip (or so Pete told me) and only stayed in a motel one night due to a tornado warning (the cop told us to) in Gillette Wy. It is just as nice now as then. Long sweepers with a big mountain stream running beside us. I am enjoying the dry air as well. We descended forever to the valley floor in Idaho and then decided that Walla Walla Washington would be the end stop today. We rode beside another larger river after Orofino with rolling hills dropping to our road and the river, sort of a fjord feeling place. At the end of this we climbed the smooth treeless hills and popped up on top of a high plateau where we saw rolling wheat fields as far as the eye can see. Tractors the size of dinosaurs and all kinds of farm machinery this Vermont farm boy could not figure out. We saw a helicopter all tricked out for spraying the fields. There is a long history of grain production here and the towns display founding dates in the mid to late 1800s. Businesses all center around grain. We saw abandoned railroad beds that went beside large grain elevators. I assume trucks replaced the trains, maybe they will be back when diesel prices climb. At least the beds are in place, just add some rails.
We pulled into Walla Walla around 4pm. We are way ahead of schedule and Jeff and Dave are hatching plans for where we go next. I am happy to just be on the bike moving. We will see what they figure out for tomorrow..