Water for Humans

  Interesting to learn where your friends, the people you meet along this path, end up.
  When I was in the Seattle area a couple weeks ago I got in touch with Rick McKenney, a Colorado State University engineering school grad whom I used to hang out with in Fort Collins in the mid-'80s. This is a guy I climbed mountains with - Mount Evans during a hair-raising (literally) electrical storm - and mountain biked with before mountain biking was cool.
  Rick worked for Boeing in Seattle for many years before resigning to do something more socially responsible, more environmentally conscious. After a few years working with a firm in British Columbia trying to develop hydrogen power, he ended up back in Seattle as a private consultant.
  He's also developed a nonprofit project called Water for Humans, which works to provide clean water and sanitation in the world's developing countries. Rick works out of his basement, but as the organization's executive director, he has also spent a lot of time in Mexico during the last couple years, helping a community around Oaxaca City.
  To find out more, check out www.waterforhumans.org. Rick can use your help.

Murals everywhere

  TOPPENISH, Wash. - If you've been through Delta, Colorado, you may have noticed the wall murals that have popped up on a few buildings downtown. Well, here in Toppenish they are everywhere. There is probably not a spot you can stand in the small downtown area and not see one. There are around 70 large murals, and they depict the town's Western heritage of exploration, wildlife, American Indian/European settler relations, and gambling. The mural in the accompanying photo shows  "The Stick Game," an American Indian gambling game.

  Toppenish is a town of about 9,000 on the Yakama Indian Reservation in central Washington, not far from the city of Yakima.

  Also here is everybody's favorite destination, the American Hop Museum. I didn't find out about it until too late. Maybe next time ...

Stonehenge

  This strange creation sticks out among the otherwise open green fields as you drive across the Columbia River from Oregon into Washington on U.S. Highway 97, just east of The Dalles. If it looks sort of like Stonehenge, that's because it is. A lookalike, anyway.

 
A Quaker pacifist named Samuel Hill had it built in honor of 13 Klickitat County men who were killed in battle during World War I. When Hill visited England's Stonehenge at about the same time, and was told that people were sacrificed there, he said this, according to the plaque at the "new" Stonehenge:
  "After all our civilization, the flower of humanity is still being sacrificed to the god of war on the fields of battle."
  Later research determined that maybe people weren't sacrificed at the original Stonehenge, but Hill's memorial, which he named and built to resemble Stonehenge, makes its point all the same.

'Twilight' zone

  PORT ANGELES, Wash. - Vampire fans, try not to be jealous. I'm in the land of "Twilight," where in downtown Port Angeles you can get all your "Twilight" swag at Dazzled by Twilight, a gift shop dedicated to nothing but the books/movies that I'm told are shaking up teenage girls (and all you women ages 20-99 who are really still girls at heart).
  Nearby you can visit the Bella Italia restaurant where Bella and Edward had their first date, and the bookstore, Port Book and News, where readers sometimes assume Bella visited.
  At Dazzled by Twilight, visitors have put pins on a map of the world, revealing that this phenomenon is truly global. Three pins designating tourists from Tehran, many from Brazil, Kazakhstan, everywhere. The next movie comes out June 30 (I'm so excited), and the North Olympic Peninsula, which includes Port Angeles and Forks, where much of the action is based, expects a good bump in tourist revenue. Forks Chamber of Commerce Director Marcia Bingham told the Peninsula Daily News, "We are going to be deluged."