It's shocking how few times I've crossed the Cascades into Eastern Washington in the seventeen years that I've lived in Seattle. We go up or down the I-5 corridor, usually heading for Portland or Vancouver, or we cross Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula. But we never go more than about 30 miles inland.

We needed a break and we wanted to celebrate our 12th anniversary. For once, we decided to head over to Washington's wine country. The Tri-Cities Wine Festival was being held in Kennewick today, so that was our destination.

We drove across Snoqualmie Pass yesterday, through sleeting rain and snow, arriving in Kennewick after dark. This morning, we wandered around Howard Amon Park on the Columbia, then headed west towards Benton City to visit some wineries. We were struck by how arid the landscape is once you leave the riverfront: scrub and tumbleweeds mostly, with the occasional orchard or vineyard. Such a contrast to verdant Western Washington.

We visited three wineries on Sunset Road in the Red Mountain Appellation. We liked Kiona Winery and Tapteil Winery enough that we came away with bottles from each. Tapteil provided us with a Syrah and some olive oil; Kiona, some Lembergers, a Merlot, and a Gewurztraminer. Were it not for the wine festival, we would have stopped at more wineries.

The Tri-Cities Wine Festival was held at the Convention Center, across the street from our hotel. More than 80 wineries were exhibiting there. We sampled wines from a large number of them. Neither of us are wine connoisseurs and the wines quickly started to blur together. Emma kept notes on the program, so there's some hope that we'll be able to buy our favorites later. Many of the smaller ones sell most of their stock through their tasting rooms.

Curiously, many of the wines we liked were grown around Lake Chelan. Clearly, another wine trip is called for.

Wine was not being sold at the festival. I imagine this was partly for logistics and partly due to the crazy patchwork of laws surrounding the sale and shipping of alcohol in this country.

Tomorrow, we plan to head south to the Columbia gorge, where it separates Washington from Oregon, and visit a few more wineries.

Chuckanut Drive is one of Washington State's best yet least-known scenic drives. Take I-5 north from Seattle for 70 miles. Just past Burlington, exit on to state route 11. The highway heads northwest towards the coast across the fertile floodplain of the Skagit valley. For nine miles, you drive past farms and fields. Then the road rises at the coast, changing character instantly.

Now you're driving along the rocky, forested shoulder of the Chuckanut mountains. One hundred feet below as you drive along the twisty, shady road, you can catch glimpses of the waters of Samish Bay through the trees. If you look closely, you may see the train tracks, practically at water's edge. Look out across the bay and you can see the San Juan islands and, behind them, Vancouver Island.

There are a handful of viewpoints. Stop, get out, look around. There are oyster beds below, though it's hard to tell.

When you get to Larrabee State Park, turn down into it. Walk under the train tracks and go down to the rocky promontories and along the beach. Stop at Cove Road and go down to the boat slip and watch the kayakers.

A few miles further along Chuckanut Drive and you'll reach Fairhaven, a small brick town built in the 1880s. Once a fishing village, it now has retirees and restaurants and stores. Fairhaven has been absorbed into the nearby city of Bellingham, but it retains its own character.

South of Bellingham, I-5 runs through the rocky forest along Lake Samish, on the east side of the Chuckanut mountains. It's the most scenic part of I-5 in all of Washington state.

We made the trip just that this afternoon. The photos are at Flickr.

This may, perhaps, be old news in bear circles, but I only read it ten days ago on the plane over, in Robert Hughes' quirky Barcelona the Great Enchantress. The founder of Catalunyan/Catalonian/Catalan national independence a thousand years' ago was the Visigoth known as Wilfred the Hairy. History does not record with any clarity how Guifré el Pilós earned that name.

I haven't visited the Iberian peninsula since the 1970s when the well-founded stereotype was that Spanish men had mustaches. That seems to have gone out of style: almost all men, young or old, were cleanshaven. And after having seen countless women wearing tanktops in the heat, I can say that the stereotype about unshaven armpits is equally dated.

The enervating heat aside (high 30Cs = high 90Fs), Barcelona, the Pyrenees, and Figueres (Dali's hometown) were all most enjoyable.