For personal reasons I’ll write about later, I have found myself traveling hours away from home to what my brother refers to as cow-land a.k.a. Central Washington University.
I am going to say this now, I have only been away from the coastlines once before this trip: when I visited Las Vegas, Nevada during the summer of 2000. I remember when my family, neighbors and I travelled through California and into Nevada, I thought I was going to lose my mind. It was either flat, boring, and hot or hilly, boring, and hot. I’ve grown to really like Washington state and the fact they have hills and mountains! It really makes you feel like you are moving and not necessarily staying stationary in one place. This is the main reason I was excited to go. It was an adventure to see what the rest of Washington state looked like and to see the passes that I had always heard about but never seen.
The trip itself was gorgeous, and I’ll try to upload photos of it when I get home or soon afterwards. Hills, endless forests, and lakes are things I have come to love and appreciate over the sixteen years I have lived here and was plentiful during the exercusion. In fact, the ride was so enjoyable that my expectations of Ellensburg and the CWU was probably set a little too high. I figured that because there is as college, the town seemed to have a lot of places poor college students would frequent, and that there was a lot of mostly forested areas between Ellensburg and whatever is on the other side of the pass, Ellensburg itself must be impressive! Sort of like Las Vegas! Boy, was I in for a huge shock…
I anticipated farms, hot temperatures, and a smaller campus than the UW in Seattle. For some reason, however, I never considered that Ellensburg itself would be a small town. Living in a town across the water from Seattle, I had thought my town was small. Yet there are at least many modern conveniences that I take for granted and that aren’t readily available here like a routed bus line or more walkable areas (though I did see a lot of bikes about!).
Despite that, however, I am charmed by Ellensburg. It is small, quaint, and definitely not as muggy as the more western areas of Washington state. Its also not flat. Flat is bad. Hills and trees? Good. Very good. Even the campus of Central Washington University isn’t that bad. A lot of the buildings are very nice looking, and I’m envious of the fact that they their student building has more seating areas than was found at the HUB at the UW. In fact, their Student Union building gave off the vibe of a small strip mall more than anything else.
It will definitely be more exciting to see actual students roaming about the campus later today during the Discovery! event. I’m definitely eager to check out the one place I love at any college: the library. Pictures to come soon, I hope…