Outside of town, horses look great but how is that barn still standing?

"Everyone leaves home and everyone finds a place to call home. Exodus, it turns out, is Genesis." Mickey Pearlman - A Place Called Home.  Lovely book, 1997 I think.  Twenty women writing about home.  I read it when it first came out and I'm reading it again. 

I moved here to Eastern Washington nearly 13 years ago after a life living on and about the Oregon and Washington coast.  I have family here but I wondered if I would ever feel at home here.  I miss the rain, the lush greenery, and the easy proximity to the ocean.  I don't like living very far from relatives and friends so living on the coast was out.  Make what you will out of that.  We moved a lot following my Dad's profession.  He and Mom didn't buy a house until I was 15.  After I married they moved again to Portland, Oregon taking my two younger sisters with them.  Chewing this over with a sister or two, I find that my home is more with people rather than places.  The closest thing to a physical home are my two grandmother's houses.  Even after 13 years here I don't feel permanent.  But then we really aren't permanent are we? 

Sunday I got up feeling icky and blah and found my blood sugar was low.  After I ate a good breakfast and I felt better.  In the afternoon I packed up my camera, water, and a fish burrito made from the leftovers of dinner and drove off to see what was going on outside of town.  There are large wheat farms, small farms, vineyards, and more wheat fields.  A little farther where the horses pictured above live, you begin to climb into the foothills of the Blue Mountains where Oregon seeking pioneers managed to drag their wagons to reach the Walla Walla Valley and proceeded make off with the lands the native peoples occupied.  A piece of the Oregon Trail can be seen here to the west of town complete with deep ruts.  I like it up in them thar hills.

My new phone and I are becoming friends.  It remained connected while I traveled in the hills, though I didn't see a tower anywhere.  I have yet to discover all the reasons it chirps at me from time to time.  My "texting' leaves at lot to be desired.  I now understand the "why" of the abbreviated phone language although I mostly laboriously still type everything out.  I may yet give in and send more "I luv u's" than the whole thing.  Two of my grandgirls said they were thrilled their grandmas were getting with it; perhaps we are not the antiques they thought we were.  Snicker, yes, that's exactly what I am.