I am learning a lot about this country as we pass across it. I am seeing firsthand the misconceptions I have held. For example, I thought Idaho potatoes come from Idaho. Now I think they are just a type of potato and actually come from other places. We drove across the upper section of Idaho, right where it starts to fatten out. It was the most mountainous, curviest, interstate we had been on and that includes all of Montana and the Rockies.

I expected to see Idaho flat and farm land since they of course grow all the Idaho potatoes, wrong. We never saw the first farm or field of anything growing except rocks.

Cross over into Washington, the evergreen state, a person would expect to see evergreens, right?? Wrong. The whole eastern half of the state is barren, arid land that has a lot of farms that all have to irrigate or all they grow is tumbleweed. Seriously, I never expected to come into Washington and it look like Arizona as far as dry and more dry, but it did. Also as we drove through Washington I saw a sign that touted that we were entering the number one potato producing county in the nation. (see it wasn't Idaho) It was not until we had driven over half the state and went over the Cascade Mountain Range that we saw the first evergreen or anything green for that matter.

But once it turns green the state supports very dense forest with the tallest evergreen trees I have ever seen.

We came over a hill about 100 miles from Mt. Rainer and there was the volcano covered in snow and very visible. I didn't realize how far away you could see something like that. But, once we saw it we were another 2 hours of driving before we actually got close to the National Park. That was wild!!

We went to the park with the intentions of driving to the Sunrise Visitors Center at an elevation of about 6,200 feet and just looking around and coming back. We got there and they had this wonderful walking path that turned into a nice hike. We ended up turning around when we had reached an elevation of 7,700. Wow, the view from up here was what the song "How Great Thou Art" was written for. And my fit bit was proud of me too!