Spokane Trip

One of Allie's best friends from nursing school recently moved to Spokane (her husband is in residency there) so we took a three-day road trip across the state to visit them! We had met them once before very, very briefly at her graduation, but they generously opened their home to us. They even let Claire and Maggie crash their eight-month old son's nursery.

The farthest west we'd been in Washington previously was Snoqualmie Falls (aka thirty minutes away). It was fascinating to drive through the Cascade Mountains and see the desert that occupies the rest of the state. There really isn't much been Seattle and Spokane! On the way there, we stopped for lunch at a cute deli in Moses Lake. 

We arrived late Saturday afternoon and went to a trunk-or-treat event at their church. After Mass on Sunday, we ate at Cafe Rio. Allie and I had heard about it before and were very anxious to try! Their salads were just as amazing as we had hoped. Totally beats Chipotle. (Oh, and as I was writing this, I looked at the locations on their website and it turns out they have one in another Seattle suburb, ha.)

After naps, we headed to Manito Park to soak in the gorgeous fall weather and of course took lots of pictures of babies playing in a pile of leaves. 

On our way home on Monday, we stopped at this overlook of the Columbia River Gorge. So different from Seattle's evergreens but amazingly beautiful just the same. (Travel tidbit: you can only access the overlook going west on I-90.)

We stopped for lunch at another cute deli in another tiny town, Ellensburg, and bought the Frozen soundtrack at a drugstore to make it the rest of the way home. All three girls fell asleep in the back seat shortly after lunch. The whole time we were driving through the Cascades, Adam and I couldn't stop talking about how gorgeous it was and how happy we are to be living here.