A Grain Escape to the Palouse
The
swoon-worthy landscapes and small-town charms of this Northwest region
WSJ/Wall Street
Journal, July 27, 2018 2:32 p.m. ET,
TRAVEL
A Getaway to
the ‘Tuscany of America’
The Palouse—a
scenic farm region on the Washington-Idaho border—is often compared to Tuscany,
but with pie shops and ice-cream socials
The view on the
drive up Steptoe Butte along the Palouse Scenic Byway.
Sunrise from
Steptoe Butte, Wash.
The Latah
Trail, a 13-mile path between Moscow and Troy, one of the area’s many
rails-to-trails paths.
Along the Latah
Trail. The Palouse encompasses some 4,000-square miles of farm country.
Strawberry
rhubarb pie from the Pie Safe Bakery & Kitchen in Deary, Idaho.
Artisan cheese
at Brush Creek Creamery, which shares a space with the Pie Safe Bakery &
Kitchen.
Tanner Collier
at Lodgepole restaurant in Moscow, Idaho.
Lodgepole
serves sophisticated takes on regional staples such as guajillo chili-dusted
fried garbanzo beans.
Rebecca Ashbach
at the Lodgepole restaurant.
The Hunga Dunga
Brewing Co. in Moscow, Idaho.
Hunga Dunga
Brewing Co. in Moscow, Idaho.
Sunrise from
Steptoe Butte, Wash. BROOKE FITTS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Matthew Kornberg,
Wall Street Journal,
July 27, 2018 2:33 p.m. ET
July 27, 2018 2:33 p.m. ET
MY WIFE AND SON
laughed at me when, for the third time in less than a mile, I stopped our
rental car, stepped onto the gravel road and took yet another wholly inadequate
cellphone picture of the rolling fields that surrounded us.
Soon they
clambered out too and fell quiet. We were in the Palouse, a roughly
4,000-square-mile agricultural region that straddles the Idaho-Washington
border. Intensely fertile, the region is defined by its dune like hills, formed
eons ago by windblown silt.
The hills, gold
and green with grains and legumes, undulate without pattern or rhythm; every
bend in the road reconfigures the landscape in unpredictable ways, leaving you
feeling just a bit off kilter, in a perpetual low-level swoon.
This is farm
country; not anyone’s idea of a tourism hot spot. The unusual topography draws
photographers and cyclists, but even if your relationship to those pastimes is
casual at best, it is an easy place to fall in love with. At the heart of the
Palouse are two cheek-by-jowl college towns, Pullman, Wash., and Moscow, Idaho,
with populations of roughly 33,000 and 25,000, respectively. They’re about a
10-minute drive apart.
When I asked
Nancy Ruth Peterson, a lifelong Muscovite and president of the Latah County
Historical Society, to characterize the difference between the burgs, she said
“Moscow is a town that has a university. Pullman is a university that has a
town. I’m probably going to get into trouble for saying that.”
Rebecca Ashbach
at Lodgepole, an urbane New American restaurant in Moscow, Idaho.
Rebecca Ashbach
at Lodgepole, an urbane New American restaurant in Moscow, Idaho. PHOTO: BROOKE
FITTS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
And indeed,
even during a mid-July visit, when most of Moscow’s 12,000 students were gone,
the town felt alive.
We based
ourselves at the modishly refitted Monarch Motel, just a block off Main Street.
On an evening stroll, I stopped to watch the Palouse Peace Coalition string up
tie-dyed banners saying “peace” in a dozen or so languages, as they’ve done
nearly every Friday night since 2001.
I asked
coalition member Bill Beck when the peacenik contingent had taken root in the
region; he told me that many of its cohort had been there for decades, noting a
“huge number of back-to-the-landers” who came to the area in the late ’60s and
early ’70s.
“Most people
come here because of the universities. It’s this incredibly quiet, beautiful
town,” he said, gesturing down the block toward Book People of Moscow, the
largest of three independent bookshops, “with some intelligentsia.”
For dinner that
night, we went to Lodgepole, a smartly decorated New American restaurant.
Delivering a dish of very snackable guajillo chili-dusted fried garbanzo beans,
the waiter told us that legumes and pulses are a big deal in these parts.
The chickpeas
in your store-bought hummus may well come from the Palouse, and every August,
the National Lentil Festival takes place over in Pullman. Delivering the check,
he suggested we visit the town’s farmers market the next day.
We woke up
early the following morning to heed this advice. Parents deposited their kids
at Main Street’s Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre for free Saturday morning
cartoons before loading up on wiffle-bat-sized stalks of rhubarb, braided
garlic and lush greens. Some browsed crafts like ivory-colored horsehair pottery,
made with clay mined nearby in Deary, Idaho.
Horsehair,
singed on the ceramics after firing, left jagged tangles of dark lines. The
lighter lines came from the hair of Appaloosa horses—notice the middle
syllables (ap-PA-LOOSE-uh)—believed to have originated in the region. The
market’s prepared-food stands reflected the area’s diversity: Shanghai
dumplings, Egyptian pastries and for me, tamales filled with local lentils.
The Pie Safe
Bakery & Kitchen, in Deary, Idaho.
The Pie Safe
Bakery & Kitchen, in Deary, Idaho. PHOTO: BROOKE FITTS FOR THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL
At Paradise
Creek Bicycles, just behind the tamale stand, we rented bikes and decided to
take advantage of the area’s rails-to-trails paths. We rode the 7-mile Bill
Chipman Palouse Trail to Pullman, a wide and flat path with frequent turnouts
featuring interpretive and historical signs.
For all that
Moscow and Pullman have to offer, we took the greatest pleasure in exploring
the region’s smaller towns, and the byways between them. In Uniontown, Wash.,
we visited the soaring art space Artisans at the Dahmen Barn, easily
identifiable by its fence, made from more than a thousand steel wheels. Inside,
among the workspaces, we grabbed a free “Photography Hot Spots on the Palouse”
map, marked with the area’s most photogenic barns, abandoned houses and lone
trees. Its detailed rendering of small, usually unpaved farm roads that vein
the landscape proved invaluable.
Over in Deary,
at the Pie Safe Bakery & Kitchen, which shares space with the Brush Creek
Creamery, we had a lunch of grilled-cheese sandwiches and pizza, followed by a
heaping wedge of berry-lemon chess pie—alone worth a trip the Palouse. And
after a Sunday morning hike among the towering red cypress trees in the Idler’s
Rest Nature Preserve, we went to the town of Palouse, Wash., for its annual Ice
Cream Social.
As the Auf
Gehts German Band played in the gazebo of the riverside Palouse City Park, we
lined up for slices of home-baked pie, topped with ice cream scooped by the
Palouse Royalty—teenage girls in black gowns, white gloves and tiaras.
Wheels of
locally made cheese at Brush Creek Creamery, which shares space with the
bakery.
Wheels of
locally made cheese at Brush Creek Creamery, which shares space with the
bakery. PHOTO: BROOKE FITTS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sitting on the
grass beneath the towering pines at the Social, we talked to brothers Don and
Richard Scheuerman of Palouse Heritage, who are working to revive the landrace
grains that were first farmed in the region a century and a half ago.
“All these towns
have something special,” said Richard, a former professor at Seattle Pacific
University and the author of several books on the region. Don cut in to say,
“Our little town, Endicott, is on the edge of viability with about 300 people,
but it has been that way forever. Our big thing is Fourth of July. Big
fireworks. It’s really quite spectacular for a rinky-dink little town.”
For year-round
spectacle, it’s hard to beat the view from Steptoe Butte, about 13 miles
northwest of Palouse. It is no Devil’s Tower—pictures of it are typically
underwhelming but photos from it make you see why travel writers have taken to
calling the region America’s Tuscany.
When the sun
hangs low in the sky, the colors and contours of the hills deepen, and
photographers line the roadway that corkscrews up a thousand feet above the
surrounding landscape. Diehards will come out for sunrise, about 5:30 a.m.
during the summer. We were not diehard, and found sunset to be sufficiently
breathtaking.
It was another
sunset drive, over back roads from Pullman to Moscow, that convinced me that
this might be America’s most perfect agrarian landscape. The just-risen full
moon bobbed and weaved over the hilltops like a vesper sparrow chasing a
dragonfly. It only stopped when I pulled over to snap another picture.
THE LOWDOWN /
On the Loose in the Palouse
A Getaway to
the ‘Tuscany of America’
ILLUSTRATION:
JASON LEE
Getting There
From Seattle, Pullman, Wash. is about a 4½-hour drive or an hour flight
directly into the Moscow-Pullman Regional Airport. Spokane International
Airport is about a 90-minute drive from Moscow, Idaho.
Staying There
The Monarch Motel, a refitted motor lodge in Moscow, Idaho, offers simple,
stylish rooms, just a block off Moscow’s Main Street. From $79 a night, moscowmonarch.com.
Eating There On
Moscow’s Main Street, Lodgepole serves sophisticated takes on regional staples
106 N. Main St., lodgepolerestaurant.com.
At the Pie Safe
Bakery & Kitchen, in Deary, Idaho, flaky-crusted pies are the stars, but
dishes like pizza and salad that take advantage of Brush Creek Creamery’s
output are terrific too. 307 Main St., piesafebakery.com.
The
Mediterranean-influenced cuisine at the Black Cypress in Pullman reflects the
Greek heritage of chef-owner Nick Pitsilionis, a French Laundry alum. 215 E.
Main St.,theblackcypress.com.
For a taste of
the Palouse, wherever you are, flour from landrace grains can be bought from
Palouse Heritage. palouseheritage.com
Exploring There
Bikes can be rented hourly, daily and weekly from Paradise Creek Bicycles in
Moscow. 513 S Main St, paradisecreekbikes.com.
The Palouse
Scenic Byway website offers a thorough guide to Washington’s side of the
region. palousescenicbyway.org
