Tucked away at the very Northwestern most corner of the United States sits Washington State. It’s not the only state in the Union with rivers and mountains and lakes and trees, nor is it certainly not the only state like that which borders America’s Hat (aka Canada). But it very much has its own unique personality and verve. It has more glaciers than any other state in the Lower 48, and it’s also the nation’s largest supplier of apples. The world’s first soft-serve ice cream machine was located at an Olympia Dairy Queen. And Washington is also listed at being the birth place of music legends Jimi Hendrix and Bing Crosby. Oh, and some chain of coffee shops that was short-lived and made no cultural impact whatsoever was started in Washington. Star-something. I think they took their name from a Battlestar Galactica character.
So what’s the best way to make it through the perpetually drizzly roads and the cloudy, grey mountain vistas as you sip on your latte’ and make your pilgrimage to Jimi Hendrix’s birthplace? Why, it’s from behind the wheel of your car, of course. Washintonians do plenty of driving themselves, naturally. They log just over 11,000 miles annually in the 4.6 million registered vehicles. And if they don’t have a vehicle (and don’t take advantage of public transportation or bicycles) they take advantage of one of the 2,096 dealerships found throughout the state with cars for sale, many of which contribute to the $10.4 billion in new car sales. Helping to keep those cars on the road or in manufacture are the 48,127 auto industry jobs found throughout the state.
If you wanted to, you could take the nation’s longest interstate highway, I-90, which runs from Seattle to Boston for a distance of just over 3,000 miles.
Just be sure that when you’re driving at night you don’t forget to have a man with a red lantern walk ahead of you 50 feet. That’s against the law.
