Act I: Seattle to Walla Walla

Cities can be generous providers, so what they lack often isn’t apparent until you step outside of them. Take the sky, for instance. Some cities offer small pockets of blue tucked between pillars of glass and steel. In others you can see larger patches that fluctuate often enough between fluffy clouds and swaths of gray that you forget that the sky isn’t something that is just contained within your cityscape’s snow globe. The sky extends into the light years of forever.

It was fitting then, that as we headed east (into what for most of the rest of the country is the Wild West), our celebration of independence extended into a boundless sky. We could drive for days, we could see for days, we were free for days.

After 5 hours of a mercifully traffic-free drive to Walla Walla, we rolled onto the gravelly drive at the charming Inn at Woodhaven Farm. I was happy enough that it was as quaint and peaceful as I had hoped, but when innkeepers Jill and Laurie invited us to help ourselves to the fresh homemade cookies sitting right outside our door, I became certain that it would be a very good stay indeed.