My wife and I took a road trip to Spokane, Washington, this past weekend to celebrate a wedding in the family. For a guy who wears Hawaiian shirts and Teva® sandals to work during the summer, there is no better inducement for attending a wedding than the prospect of parading around outdoors in a suit and tie during an eastern Washington July afternoon. Spokane sits on a basaltic steppe, known as scablands, in a landscape characterized as the best terrestrial analog of Martian outflow channels¹, overlooking what Köppen–Geiger and Trewartha both classify as a desert. The weather forecast suggested a temperature near 100° was on the schedule just about the time the bride and groom were expected to be saying they did.

Beautiful as eastern Washington may be, ours was not an occasion for sightseeing other than whatever was within the limits of the view from I–90. Of course, moments after crossing the Columbia River at Vantage, Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies presented itself, so not all hope of seeing something other than WalMart trucks was lost. As we blasted past some of the 671,000 cultivated acres made possible by the Columbia Basin Project, I noted that the exterior temperature had reached triple digits and then happened to see that my wife was using the heater built in to her seat. I took the following video to document one of the most excellent sights I have ever seen while on the road.

Cortana told us we should stop for dinner at Rock Top Burgers & Brew in Moses Lake. We will not do that again. The place was crowded, and the service was altogether friendly, but the food should have been left on the Sysco truck that very probably delivered it, and the kitchen needs to have its salt privileges revoked. And how does a burger joint allow itself to have a broken milkshake machine (The second time this month!) on a Friday night in the middle of summer? I understand a community of 20,000 souls where the Rubber Duck Race at Cascade Park is front‐page news is unlikely to sustain fine‐dining choices until I happen to wander in off the freeway to eat: the Yelp scores for this restaurant are a cry for help.

Sunsets over the Inland Empire are worth a stop to bear witness. On this day, the hot breeze ushered the scent of sere grass into the umber light, while the horn of an unseen locomotive called attention to the lambent moon that had arrived early at its place in the evening sky. We were only a half hour or so away from our destination for the night, but lingered alongside the highway as the crickets began singing.

When we arrived at our hotel on the bank of the Spokane River, some poor guy was on the Division Street bridge, threatening to jump into the water forty feet below. Boats are not allowed downstream beyond the bridge because the Spokane Falls are around the next bend, so I was glad when the fellow was coaxed to where he was sure to keep his feet dry.

The Olmstead Brothers designed several of the parks in Spokane in the early twentieth century as the City Beautiful movement swept the United States. The grounds of the world exposition Expo ’74 are now the lovely Riverfront Park near Spokane Falls, and the campus of Gonzaga University just upriver from the falls is a jewel. The wedding took place at a country club on the outskirts of the city, on a hillside facing due west. (For those who skipped Boy Scouts: west is the direction where you stare directly into the nuclear furnace.) It makes no difference how many lilacs one plants if it is so bloody hot outside only a camel would be interested in going for a stroll. I sat very still, moving only to lick the sweat off my upper lip.