Saturday, September 05, 2015

Did you hear my state is burning to the ground?

I am in Spokane currently, visiting friends and family. Not too long ago the air pollution here was so bad from the fires that people were being encouraged to stay indoors.
Today it is drizzly here and although the visibility is not any better than it was when the sky was thick with smoke haze, it smells considerably better.

The middle bit of the state is still aflame but most of the fires on the west side of the state are out.




They tend to call anything west of the Cascade mountains "the coast." This is blatantly inaccurate and inexcusable. Below you see a map of Washington with a highlighted line along the mountains in the middle-ish of the state. To the far left you will see another highlighted area— the actual coast of Washington, where the Pacific ocean meets the land. There is also the Puget Sound, but that is not coastline.
   


Now, the people over here on the east side have a sort of reciprocal complain about us Westies. We tend to call everything on this side of the mountains "Eastern Washington" and the people over here get all all knotted up about that because they insist there is a Central Washington. However, I have to tell you, there is almost nothing of note in the middle of the state (other than Hanford, which we frankly try to ignore) and nothing in particular to demarcate where this supposedly central region ought to be. So They make stuff up and they also can't use geographical terms correctly. We win. 


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