090626 - Toppenish, WA

Friday, June 26,2009
Yakima County, Washington

Today I think we gave G-D a good laugh. We had plans.

We left out Yakama Indian RV Park heading for Toppenish. This is a small town with a big reputation. The people have been painting murals on their building walls for 20 years and are apparently known around the world. Personally, I never heard.

To get a good view of all of these murals (about 40), there is a horse drawn covered wagon ride that travels around the town for about an hour and gives a guided tour. We were driving thru town, looking for the loading area for the wagon tour when we turned a corner and found ourselves along side it going the opposite direction.
I come to find out that Danny may have an issue regarding horses, because as soon as he spotted the wagon he started barking. He did a similar thing when he saw a horse mannequin in one of the dioramas at a previous museum. Guessing that it would not bea good idea to put him in a horse drawn wagon, we cancelled our planed and
quietly left town. I did manage to view a few of the murals but since there was street traffic I couldn’t stop to take any pictures.

http://www.toppenish.net/

Moving on to our next destination – a new Costco Store in the City of Union Gap.
Our GPS unit had it listed in its database so we confidently followed its instructions and found ourselves in the parking lot of a Costco store all alone. Apparently, this was the old store that had been replaced and of course it was deserted. Now ordinarily I would accept an error from my GPS except for the fact that I had just bought and installed the latest updated software about 3 weeks ago.

Fortunately, using my Palm Treo Smart-phone and with the aid of GOOGLE MAPS mobile – I was able to locate the NEW Costco and even get turn by turn directions to it. It was only a mile away.

Not wanting to challenge Danny too much I decided to leave him home. I fired up the generator, put the air conditioner on high, filled his water bowl to the brim and told him he was on guard duty. He seemed to understand, and when I returned he was smiling and wagging and everything appeared to be as I left it. He is a good boy.
We traveled on to a nearby Wal-Mart where I planned on doing some grocery shopping and then staying overnight. Usually, I waited till after dark when the volume of shoppers decreases and the parking lot empties out. That way I can move the Beast much closer to the front door so I don’t have to push a heavy shopping cart very far to unload it. This particular store was quite busy and the parking lot was still full by late evening. Even waiting till ten o’clock did not matter. This was one popular place. I finally made the decision to take the long walk. Fortunately, an electric shopping cart was available and I did manage to get everything I needed. The long walk (and push) back to the RV was good exercise (I keep telling myself) and when I open the front door, Danny’s happy face and wagging tail cheered me up.