Bring it on Yak-ima!

Apparently Labor Day weekend = canning. Who knew. Our friends have the canning bug and invited us to go to Yakima with them to get mega deals on produce, and of course enjoy an adventurous road trip. We were totally in since, of course you know, Dan also has the canning bug. Our eyes were wide with hopes of quaint towns, fields of produce and cheap prices.

We were off! Dan and I in our car following the Jones clan in their car. This is one of my favorite photos from the trip...



We stopped in Cle Elum, which was kind of cute and quaint, for lunch. We were pretty hungry so we took the first place we could see to eat, which unfortunately wasn't very quaint or cute. But, the food hit the spot. We then went to the bakery where I enjoyed a frosted doughnut with walnuts. YUM!





I got this great photo of Dan. This is the Dan I LOVE with his dimple and smirk, isn't he cute?



We decided to take the "scenic route" from Cle Elum to Yakima which turned out to just be the "off the freeway route". I took some shots from the car to capture it's odd beauty. I was particularly fascinated with how hills looked like splitting fur (not that I really know what that looks like).




The river was pretty, and we saw a lot of people floating in the river on rafts, which looked like it would be fun.



There was a monument...



I'm going to blow past this next part. The Hotel. Let's just say there were bugs, and an overflowing toilet tank. Enough said. The town also left a lot to be desired, it was very sleepy which made it hard to find a good place for dinner. We saw some locals gathering on the side of the road and thought maybe there was a parade or something, so we asked and found out that there was a car parade of sorts going on that night. Tons of old cars were dragging up and down the street, it was kind of cool. We finally found a place to eat and went back to the dump we were calling a hotel to get some sleep for the next big day of produce collection.

We all decided that one night in this little town was plenty so we checked out and took off for the farmer's market. Finally the town was redeemed! The market was lovely, the people were nice, the sun was out, and the produce was huge and cheap as promised. Look at these cantaloupe!!! This guy practically begged me to take his picture.








They had hot food stands, bread and pastries even fresh cut fruit.




The big draw for this weekend were the u-pick tomatoes. Rumor had it they were .29 per pound so we could make salsa, marinara sauce, BBQ sauce or whatever! As we drove to the farm we passed miles and miles of orchards, apple, pear, plum. I thought it was really beautiful.



When we got to the farm we decided the prices for already picked tomatoes were good enough and we really didn't feel like getting down in the dirt to pick. This place also had gourds and pumpkins, corn, beans, pears, peppers all of which looked great.






The cutest was when the woman at the check-out gave Miles a free pumpkin. He got so excited!



We had a HUGE load of food when we were done. I think the total was $26.00 for 75lbs of tomatoes, 12 ears of corn, some onions and a bunch of peppers.



We wanted some fruit so we took off to one last place and picked up some plums and apples. They even had things I'd never heard of before...like a Santa Clause Melon.




It was a good trip. The best part for me was getting more in touch with where my food comes from and who grows it. In most cases the farmers were so friendly and really loved talking about their produce, you could really see they were proud of what they grew. I think this might be an annual tradition, except we'll probably stay overnight in Ellensburg.