Day 19

After indulging in waffles covered in strawberries and cottage cheese, I leave the posh atmosphere of the Baymont and head across the Columbia for the last time. On the other side, in Pasco, the difference is like night and day. My first impression is that  everything and everybody here is hispanic. I genuinely feel as though I'm a foreigner lost somewhere in Mexico.

Well, it doesn't take very long before I meet a couple non-latino guys, Robert and Doug, and we get to talkin' and they advise me about where I can do my laundry the cheapest and how to find the Union Gospel Mission if I want a warm place to stay for the night. Helpful men, these two. So, I find a place to wash my clothes (they needed it badly) and by the time I finish and have a burrito, it's 16:30. A bit too late to start off down highway 124, so I get an inexpensive room in a motel called The Thunderbird. This place captivated my imagination as I could almost envision how it was in the late 50s, early 60s when it would have been in its prime. Quite sad what it's been reduced to now, but I'm sure that in its day, there was nothing finer.

I attend the chapel service at the mission in the evening and have some really great conversations with a couple of the guys before returning to the spinach coloured shag carpet of room 201. One more hot shower and I'm ready for the final stretch tomorrow.