A River Runs Through It

Well, folks, remember me? Patsy is still in Wonderland, but Wonderland was Las Vegas, for 16 months, and now it's not! I was blogging about my adventures fairly regularly--until June 18, 2007. Then, ahm, er, ah--the dog ate my grandmother and my pen died? So I couldn't blog for a loooong time?

Not sure that anyone's buying that. Regardless, I'm back, and I'm in the Tri-Cities area of Washington state, and I'm happy as a hog in mud, and I'm going to tell you all about how I got here and what's going on. BUT FIRST----

I had a three-day weekend this weekend (May 16-18, 2008), and after unpacking some more of the endless boxes BEAUTIFULLY packed by my wonderful movers in Vegas, Crown Movers, with J.R. Schults in charge, I decided to take some time on Saturday. Not the least of the reasons for my trip was that it was Bill's and my 21st anniversary (which HE let me know he remembered by sending me a happy anniversary email on Friday! What a guy!) Anyway, I was emailing him (and the whole Shepherd tribe) at great lengths to tell everyone about my trip, when it suddenly occurred to me that it really belongs in a blog, NOT in the email. So I cut it out, pasted it here, and finished the email, making it much (well, at least a little) shorter.

My plan is to write a few blogs that bring everyone up to date on the adventures of Patsy in Wonderland (Wonderland, now, being Washington). In the meantime, here's my new address, for those who care: 6626 Chapel Hill Blvd., Apt. #H1o8, Pasco, WA 99301-3766. Phone number is still the same, 512-294-0080 (cell phone) and I'll be getting a new permanent work phone sometime next week, but for now, that should do it. Now, on to the trip.

Yesterday I drove up towards Yakima. It's only 63 miles from my door to the door of The Legends Casino of the Yakama Indians (the tribe spells their name with two As, but the rest of the world uses an A and an I, for some reason), and I'd been 2 weeks without setting foot in a casino (and hadn't missed it, as it happens--a surprise to me, who used to go 2-3 times a week), so I thought it might be fun to see what The Legends was all about. The drive was absolutely spectacular, in a way entirely different from the spectacularity (that just became a word--because I said so!) of the drive up here from Vegas. The Yakima Valley was almost indescribable (though I'm going to try) in its beauty, and I thought often about stopping to take pictures. Never did, though, because I decided it needs a panoramic camera--and a photographer--to really do it justice.

As I've said, this is a wine-growing region. Coincidentally, I unpacked a box yesterday that had two bottles of wine that were mine (and two bottles that were strange concoctions and I guess were Elizabeth's. Too bad for her: I may just throw them out the way she did with my ficus tree! But more about that in a later blog.). One of the bottles was a Riesling from Hogue Winery in Prosser, WA, and I drove through Prosser on my trip yesterday. Didn't stop, but if the Riesling turns out to be good, I will go back and ask for a tour and a tasting! Anyway, my travels took me along the Yakima Valley, with the wide beautiful Yakima River flowing broadly and quite majestically on my right as I drove northwest, and lovely soft hills with deep creases made by creeks flowing down to the river on my left. The hills appeared to be covered in grey-green velvet, and they looked like you could smooth your hand over them and the texture would be just that, soft and velvety. And there were clusters of trees around little nestled farm houses (or larger homes that clearly belonged to a vineyard owner). The trees were so neat and green that they looked as if they'd been trimmed into tall tapered or shorter round shapes--though I'm sure no one took the time to actually trim them; it was just how they grew naturally.

When I was little, 8 or 9 or 10, I had a book called something like "Patsy and Peter in Fairyland," which I'm sure was given to my family because we had a Patsy and Peter. Unfortunately the book was destroyed in 1956 when our cottage on Bustins burned up, and I don't remember the plot at all. But I STILL vividly remember that book because of the gorgeous romantic cumulus clouds in every picture of the sky and the beautiful fairyland where the story took place: little squares of fields lined with tall tapered and short round trees growing as they could ONLY grow in some kind of fairyland--or so I thought until I drove through the Yakima Valley. The little squares of fields were bigger than the ones in the P&P book, and they were usually vineyards (grape-growing requires the kind of climate and environment that you find on hillsides like these, which gently slope to a river, or so I've been told) or large fields that had 8-foot-tall sticks planted in neat rows about four feet apart for acres and acres. I'm not sure what grows in these "stick" fields, although in one such field there seemed to be something like bean vines starting up the poles. Anyway, I'm pretty sure they weren't going to be grapes, because the structures that the grapevines grow on are about 3-4 feet tall and have wire strung between the poles for the vines to grow along. And in most of the vineyards, the vines, which are cut back each winter, had already started a pretty healthy bit of growing.

I got to the Casino about 6, and it was packed. They were celebrating the next-to-last day of their month-long 10th anniversary event, and they were giving away the 9th of 10 cars (one a day for 10 days). No, I didn't win the car, but I played until about 2 p.m., and came home with 250% more than I came with, so I consider that part of the trip almost as successful as the actual drive up there. AND the drive back: It amazed me to see as many lights as I did at that early (2-3 a.m.) hour. Driving up in daylight, you didn't have the sense of a lot of people out there. The farms were literally nestled in the bosom of the land (I mean it, folks, it was SO beautiful that it is really hard to describe) and there didn't seem to be all that many. But judging from the breadth and number of the lights that showed up in the dark, the valley is moderately well populated.

The Casino itself was, as I said, packed, and it was also smoky (though not the worst on that account that I've ever been in) and noisy (it WAS the noisest casino I've EVER been in, I decided). It was also kind of strange, in that it was divided into two large sections or rooms, and if you played in one section and got tickets out of the machines you played (slot machines don't spit out coins anymore, for those of you interested--it's all paper money in and tickets out--that is, you get a ticket if you don't use up all your paper money--and I never did. I won at every machine I played, and then I doubled my money when I played Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em, which is a table game)--anyway, if you got tickets in one of the rooms, you had to take them to the Cashier's cage and get them cashed if you were going into the other room, because that room only took it's OWN kind of tickets. Sort of made me think that warring factions of the Yakama Tribe ran each room--almost expected Yakima Canute (I do remember him, Bill) to come out of one side leading a band of brothers in a raid on the other side!

As a new member of the Players Club, I was given a T-shirt (size L, with a pocket. Too small for me, but I guess I'll bring it up to Maine this summer and give it to whomever it fits--unless there are takers in the audience?) and a free meal. I chose the Deli (the Buffet stopped serving at 10 p.m., and I didn't think I'd be hungry at that point) and, because it was Saturday, they had a special: steak and eggs and hashbrowns and toast for $5 until 2 a.m. I was all excited--until they brought my meal. I had been given a $6 voucher, but, because I had my Players Card, the meal only cost $3 (I had to get 2 big bottles of Pepsi to use up the rest of the voucher--they're sitting in the fridge even as I write). Well, let me assure you, the steak was worth EVERY bit of---$1.25! Yuck! The eggs were good--what can you do to scrambled eggs, after all? But the hashbrowns were a FAR cry from good, and the toast was dry and hard--with only something called "Freezerves," freezer jam that gets mushy in the freezer and then almost liquifies when you spread it on your toast. I guess I won't be going back to the Legends because of its "legendary" steak and eggs anytime soon.

But I WILL be making that drive again--it was an hour of beauty and interesting things to see, and there were lots of things to stop and visit along the way, wineries, museums, an old airfield that seems to have been updated, and, of course, the river. I'll go back often, even if no one ever comes to visit me and wants to go along.

Tune in again next time, when I'll reveal the strange series of events that brought Patsy to this new Wonderland. It'll be titled (can you guess?) "Leaving Las Vegas," and it'll probably take several cliff-hanging installments.