E-Burg

Ellensburg, Washington. It's affectionately called "E-Burg." I was just thinking the other day that it's probably a good thing it wasn't named "Ellensville."


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Anyway, Mark and I went to E-Burg for an open house in our honor. We took our time on the roadtrip up to the middle of Washington.

We stopped in Boise, Idaho, and spent a couple hours in the Boise Temple, worshipping.

Staying in town, we had dinner with one of Mark's childhood friend--Kelly Mower. Mark and Kelly haven't seen each other since they were 13! That's a long time. It was great to meet Kelly and his wife. We laughed for a long time and enjoyed a great dinner.

That evening, we stayed in Nampa, Idaho, with one of my all-time best friends (Karen) and her family. Karen has twins, Hailie and Wendi, and a boy, Ben. We got some good laughs in before we continued on our journey to E-Burg.

We next stopped in Richland, Washington, and spent a couple hours in the Columbia River Temple, worshipping. We met a couple people who ended up coming to our open house two days later.

The next day, Mark took me on a tour of E-Burg.

We saw this really strange house with a lot of unusual art decorating it. Trust me--you can't miss it. It's called "Dick & Jane's Spot." They are artists who married each other.

We saw the campus of Central Washington University where Mark's dad was a professor for many years.

We looked over the rodeo grounds of one of the most famous annual rodeo events.

We walked downtown and saw the gorgeous Davidson Building (that we also got an amazing sketching of as a wedding gift).

Mark checked the local livestock for their goods. I just enjoyed getting to know the livestock, on a different, perhaps more appropriate, level.

Then Mark took me up on top of one of the nearby mountains so I could look down over the valley. We did a little hike to a place called Umptanum Falls. It was a short little jaunt and it was ever so lovely.

That evening we went with the folks up a different canyon to have a little picnic at Taneum campground. It was cold. So, the food was hastily processed in--and the people hastily motored out. That fast. Lickety split.

When we got back, Mark and I went to Kung Fu Panda and we laughed our guts out. Well, not literally. But enough that we felt quite light-hearted the rest of the weekend and quoted lines to each other. Po: "The Sword of Heroes! Said to be so sharp you can get cut just by looking at - Ow!"

The next day we had our open house. Refer to the previous post.

Sunday, we drove all the way back to our house.