Far off adventures don’t really need to be that far away from home.
Our road trip team spent the afternoon in Ellensburg, WA, just about two hours from Stuck at The Airport headquarters in Seattle. And while we didn’t get to do everything on our list, we revisited two favorite places with fresh, post-pandemic (we hope) eyes.
Dick and Jane’s Spot
We’ve pulled off the highway numerous times over the years just to see Dick and Jane’s Spot, across from the police station at 1st and Pearl St., and it always delights us.
The art-filled yard of artists Jane Orelman and Dick Elliott (now deceased) has changed a wee bit over the years, but it’s still ” dedicated to the philosophy of ‘one hearty laugh is worth ten trips to the doctor.’
Kittitas County Historical Museum
Some people skip the historical museums when they visit small towns. We start there. And the Kittitas County Historical Museum is one of our all-time favorites, with exhibits on everything from antique cars, and the famed Ellensburg Blue Agate, to medical and military history, and a hallway filled with neon signs rescued from long-gone local establishments.
Bonus: Double rainbow spotted from the hotel parking lot
Here’s a crazy travel story for the New Year that’s not about flying, but about driving.
Truck surrounded by tumbleweeds near Richland Washington. Photo: Washington State Patrol Trooper C. Thorson
On Tuesday night – New Year’s Eve – at least five cars and an eighteen-wheeler truck got trapped in a bizarre, giant pile-up of tumbleweeds on a rural, central Washington State highway.
According to the Washington State Patrol, the tumbleweed invasion was so serious that the highway had to be closed for 10 hours, trapping the drivers inside their cars until 4:30 a.m. New Year’s Day.
Washington State Trooper Chris Thorson told the YakkTriNews that strong winds blew tumbleweeds into an area with berms near the roadway and that caused the tumbleweeds to clog the highway.
There were so many tumbleweeds on the road that when cars stopped to avoid hitting the tumbleweeds they ended up getting buried by them.
#tumblegeddon After 10 hours of SR 240 being closed last night on New Year’s Eve, it was opened around 0430 thanks to @WSDOT_East We still have one abandon car trapped in the tumbleweeds that was found at daylight, luckily no one was in it. pic.twitter.com/df7XbnqafE
You might stay entertained on the highway playing Punch Buggy, a game in which passengers slug each other in the shoulder whenever a Volkswagen Beetle goes by.
But to learn something about trends in the economy while out on the highway, watch for a different type of vehicle.
“I’m starting to see a lot more RV products on the road. And it’s not just because it’s summer,” said Kathryn Thompson, CEO of Nashville, Tennessee-based Thompson Research Group.
“An RV is as discretionary a purchase as you can think of,” she said. “So if someone is buying an RV, something must be working.”
Photo courtesy Rich Eiswerth
According to Thompson, sales of recreational vehicles in the United States hit a low point during the recession, bottoming out in the spring of 2009 with the bankruptcy of two large motor home manufacturers—Fleetwood Enterprises and Monaco Coach.
Yet these days, RV sales have improved along with the economy. Lower priced towables and trailers, with price tags that can start at around $10,000, led the recovery. Sales of the more expensive motorized RVs, including motor homes that can have price tags well over $500,000, caught up later.
“In North America sales were was running over 300,000 units a year until 2008,” said Tom Walworth, president of Statistical Surveys in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “In 2009, sales dropped to 206,000 units. By 2013, they went back to 303,000 units. So in four years it came back 47 percent from the bottom, which is very impressive as an economic indicator,” Walworth said.
During that time, sales of towable RVs (including folding trailers, truck campers and travel trailers) rose 46.4 percent, while sales of the more expensive motorized motorhomes (categorized as Class A, B or C) gained 51 percent from the 2009 low.
This year, shipments of new RVs to dealers will total 349,400 units, an 8.8 percent over 2013, said RV analyst Richard Curtin, director of the Consumer Research Center at the University of Michigan. In 2015, he expects shipments to rise another 3.1 percent.
Who’s buying all these RVs?
“Boomers are the largest demographic of RV owners,” said Mac Bryan, vice president of administration at the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association. “But those age 35-54, the younger consumers who want to be active and outdoors, are the fastest-growing demographic.”
And when friends and family members go along on RV trips, or just hear about them, “that introduces even more people to the RV lifestyle,” Bryan said.
“We have an increasing number of friends and acquaintances ‘of a certain age’ who have chosen the RV lifestyle full or part-time,” said Richard Eiswerth, president and general manager of a Cincinnati public radio station who is in his early 60s. “If and when I retire, who knows?”
Longtime tent campers, Eiswerth and his wife, Susan, last May dipped their toes in the RV ownership market with a small, retro-style, teardrop trailer they bought in Wisconsin before heading west for a trip to Devil’s Tower, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons.
The couple has large dogs, so they also bought an attachable add-on tent to cover the crates the dogs sleep in at night.
“We didn’t want to simply have another, more expensive, version of home on wheels with all the frills and luxuries of our actual home. We wanted to be able to travel to and camp in a variety of locales, not just asphalt RV compounds,” Eiswerth said.
He lists the advantages of the small camper as better gas mileage than a larger RV, ease of maneuverability, speed and convenience of set-up and tear-down and heat and air conditioning, when necessary.
And best of all, he said, “Much like a tent, this has a connection to the outdoors.”
(My story on recreational vehicles sales increasing first appeared on CNBC Road Warrior).
Travel between Yakima and Sunnyside, Washington on Interstate 82 and you’ll come upon a turnout for the town of Zillah, home to a 15-foot-tall teapot complete with sheet metal handle and concrete spout.
It’s a classic 1920s bit of roadside architecture that for many years served up gas to motorists and a history lesson to everyone.
The story goes that Jack Ainsworth decided to build the teapot after a night of drinking moonshine and playing cards. Ainsworth and his buddies were appalled over the outcome of President Warren G. Harding’s decision a year earlier to transfer the control of naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming and Elk Hills, California from the Navy to the Department of the Interior.
It seems that the then Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, had leased those oil fields to two businessmen who had given him what ultimately were deemed to be illegal ‘loans.’
Investigations ensued, fines were paid, folks ended up in jail, and the oil fields reverted to government control in 1927.
Ainsworth built the Teapot Dome Gas Station to poke fun at the whole situation
while the trials were underway and, until it ceased commercial operation in the early 1990s, the station was said to be one of the oldest functioning gas stations in the United States.
Even though it was boarded up and forlorn-looking on the edge of town, the teapot had a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.
Now it’s going to have a place of honor in Zillah’s tiny downtown.
The city of Zillah raised funds to purchase, re-locate and re-purpose the teapot as an information booth and last week, minus its spout and its shingles, the teapot was packed up and trucked into town.
When it is all put back together, repaired and refurbished, the Teapot Dome Gas Station, along with its old “Gas” sign and outhouse, will sit next to the Civic Center in Zillah, WA.
