Our girls are enjoying the outing, They have picked a few berries already and they like it. 

We just knew that picking berries would appeal to Dahlia's earthy nature. 

Dahlia dillegently harvests her berries. 

Taking their lunch-break from the hard work of huckleberry picking. 

The towers must be around a hundred feet tall, but the hillside is so steep that you are closer to the top of the tower from this vantage point than to the base of it. 

We didn't pick right under these powerlines, but we were close enough to hear their constant crackle and hum. 

Now that the day's picking is done, it is time to pose with our booty: Grandpa picked all the ones Surenna is displaying and the rest of us picked the one Dahlia is holding. 

Day 4 We drive across the state

A 300 mile drive through (mostly) barren countryside with three young children could be painfull. It turned out to be fun and fine. We started out with a brunch at Vaishali's newlywed cousin's house. I had never met the cousin, whom Vaishali hadn't seen in about a dozen years and it was the first meeting for all of us of her husband Sid. They are a delightful young couple and the South Indian cooking really hit the spot. Distance-wise though, we had not covered much ground. They live only about 4-5 miles from Mary & Rob's home. The next stop was in the area of Ellensburg to gas-up the Buick Rendezvoux. The girls mostly slept through the one part of the trip which has nice scenery. We stopped just a few miles further just after crossing the mighty Columbia river and looked at the horses. The piece is called something like: "The old man lets loose the ponies" and is a recreation in life-sized steel horses of the native's myth of where horses came from all of a sudden 3 or 4 hundred years ago. It was blazing hot there, dry and dusty too. The hill was steep and crumbly and the children flushed and recalcitrant. But really, it was a lot of fun and the view was great--plus, a real appreciation for the wonder that is air conditioning once we got back on the road. The rest of the trip should have been quite dull--140 miles of flat treeless plain. It went really fast though, the speed limit is 70 or 75 (can't remember now) so I went just under 80 the whole way. When there isn't much traffic there is less stress and you can listen to the itunes on the car radio. Day 5 pictures as soon as I find the time to post...