So we decided we could afford to spend a few more days on our way back home. We drove the 85 miles to Walla Walla, which is a little off of our route, but we quickly realized it was a good choice.
The RV Park in which we selected to park "The Bus" is small, but is laid out very well and is very well cared for. It's uniqueness is in the statuary all over the park. Shown below are an elk and a bighorn sheep, but these are only a small representation of the animal statues here. They have deer, bear, buffalo, cows, sheep, cougars, elephants, wolves, etc. The owner tells me they first bought a large rooster statue and it became the talk of the town. So over the years, they have continued to add more statues. They are all for sale . . . but no one is buying. They just continue to accumulate.
The big attraction here is the town itself. The downtown area has many old historic buildings and very few of them are vacant. The downtown appears to be thriving . . . probably because there is no WalMart in this town. All of the streets are tree lined and the town is very clean and everything appears to be well cared for.
Of course, this is "Wine Country Plus" . . . as evidenced by numerous wine tasting rooms right downtown. Many are side by side, next door to each other. You can walk from one winery's tasting room to another all the way through downtown. We stopped at several and, of course, bought several bottles of the wines we liked.
But we would prefer going to the actual winery rather than just the tasting rooms, so we drove out of down to an area where there was one winery after another down both sides of the road. Nearly all were small family-owned wineries surrounded by their own vineyards.
We selected the Cougar Crest Estate Winery to stop at first. It is a very modern facility, but is a full scale winery. It is owned by a man and his wife, who started it just ten years ago. He was a veterinarian and she was a pharmacist. They were growing grapes and making wine at home. Their hobby became their avocation. Both of them were working in the tasting room at the winery while we were there. We spent considerable time with the wife and learned their story of how they got in to the business and how they run the operation.
I was privileged to be given a tour of the whole facility. Since it was not grape season, the winery was not in operation, but I got to see the crushing equipment, the fermenting and blending tanks, and the bottling line.
The fermenting tanks are on the left below and the photo on the right below is of the bottling line.
Of course, the wine storage in their barrel rooms was full. Shown below is one of four barrel rooms which are temperature and humidity controlled. The windows in the overhead door are insulated glass.
Needless to say, we purchased several more bottles of wine here. In addition, we visited a couple more wineries in the area before we called it a day.
Many people have told us this area is also well known for Walla Walla Sweet Onions. We are familiar with Vidalia Sweet Onions from Georgia, but were not aware of similar onions in this area . . . but the people around here sure make a big deal about it.
We were told that the onion season isn't here yet, but on our way back to the RV Park, we drove by an onion field where workers had harvested and bagged onions leaving them in the field to dry.
There had to be a place we could buy some of these newly harvested Walla Walla Sweet Onions . . . and we located the onion stand of a local farmer. We bought a bag of onions, returned to "The Bus", grilled a couple of hamburgers and enjoyed them with slices of fresh Walla Walla Sweet Onions. They are as good as claimed!
We plan to leave this "Wine Country Plus" area tomorrow. This has been a very interesting place to spend a couple of days, but we need to get back on the road to Kansas. Carole wants to go home.
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