Oh How We Love to Wander

There isn't a whole lot to do in Moscow, ID. I suppose if you're a student you have student-y things to do, but we're not students. And we're not exactly into farming either. The nearest big-ish city is about 90 miles away. With gas prices as they are, that's not exactly a welcome thought. Besides, when you don't know a city very well and don't have any friends there, it's still hard to find that many great things to do once you get there. We got to the Apple store, wander around a bit, the end.

So we've had to find ways to improvise and entertain ourselves this year. One of the main things we've done is to wander. Generally this wandering is rather aimless. We get in the car with no real idea, point in some direction, and just go. This often means bumping along on dirt roads, much to the horror of our car, but it still gets us to the mysterious where.

For those not familiar with North Western Idaho and Eastern Washington, this area is called the Palouse. It comes from some Native word, and is used to describe the rolling hills that are predominately farmland. I can't exactly say that it's my favorite backdrop for life, but there is something interesting about the layers of hills and plant life which is currently all stubbly and in shades of brown.

On Thursday I had the day off once again. We decided to take a road we had yet to discover. There are still a few of those out there. So this time we headed for Wawawai. We had no idea where this would take us, and were soon winding our way down a twisty road into a deep canyon. At the bottom we discovered a beautiful river gorge with fascinatingly layered rocky hillsides.





We stopped at a place where fisherman were taking advantage of the still waters. We felt a little funny walking around all these serious guys, but we did our best to just stay amused and ignore their obvious curiosity. Then we drove on farther and came to a place where we could walk up into the hills a bit.










It's really quite amazing to me what you can discover when you just wander a bit. Here are these places full of beauty and intrigue, and they're literally just a short drive away, but without just going for it, we would never have discovered them. I can think of so many times in my life when I have lived near really incredible nature, but haven't ever gotten around to visiting it. So while we may often complain that we aren't living in the greatest place on the planet, as least we're going out there and seeing what there is to see.