Last night, craziness happened. As we got onto the elevator, a man who was dressed for the haunters convention that was held in the hotel pulled up his oversized cane and shot at us. We had heard this cap gun going off earlier on, when we were eating more maple ice cream, so we knew that it wasn't real ... but if we hadn't heard it earlier, my dad and I probably would have attacked him.

We got back to our room and got to sleep ... but around 1:00 in the morning, doors slammed shut and rabid carousing could be heard from other rooms. We realized at that precise moment that our worst fear had been realized: the convention people were on our floor. It got so bad that my dad called down to the front desk and made sure that someone got up to our floor to calm them down. While the man who was sent up did indeed excoriate them, we are all in unanimous agreement that he didn't do enough, as slamming doors at irregular intervals happened throughout the night.

Eventually we managed a completely free stay out of all this, so that made up for the madness. As we exited the building, we noticed a pile of boxes outside one of the nearby rooms - the topmost of which was a box for a cast-iron skillet. What folks would have any legal use for a cast-iron skillet in a hotel room in the wee hours of the morning, I do not know - and moreover, I don't want to associate myself with them.

We got out of there as fast as possible and got to the Bonneville Dam, where salmon run upstream. They have a special fish ladder that allows them to run up along their natural course without being interfered with by the dam's activities. We saw some huge fish from the underwater viewing windows, but not too many of them. (There were apparently much more yesterday, and it varies from day to day.) A little girl kept mistaking her reflection for fish, while my dad and I messed with a small boy by making faces at him - I did the troll face at him, while my dad derped his eyes and stuck his tongue out.

We went up the Columbia River, passing along the historic routes of both the Oregon Trail and the Lewis & Clark Trail along the way. Eventually, we crossed over into Washington, where we tried someone who would let us into the Gesa Stadium, where the Pasco Tri-City Dust Devils play. Their season doesn't start until a little over a week from now, and since it was Sunday, we had no luck, but it was just a short jaunt off of the highway and we were back on it in no time.

We got to Spokane a little later and got a hotel room. We looked up where to eat and found a place called the Rusty Moose. We ordered some gorgonzola fries ... the portion was absolutely huge. We tackled it, though, and kept munching on it throughout the more modestly sized entrees that we got. My dad had seen that they had mud pie, and being the mud pie connoisseur that he is, he saved room for it.

The mud pie was literally the biggest mud pie I've ever seen. The plate it came on was nearly two feet long, and it took up nearly that width. It dwarfed the larger-than-usual spoons which we were provided. It was so big, in fact, that my mom instinctively asked the waitress if this was a single serving. After a reply in the affirmative, my mom blurted out: "that is absolutely insane!"

It was insane - but even more insane is that we managed to eat most of it. They had butterfinger and reese's pieces ice creams on either side of a veritable tower of brownie-like oreoish stuff and whipped cream.

We got back to the hotel, stopping to take a few stupid pictures around statues in the front of the Rusty Moose and to see my dad rubbing his beard on a reserved parking sign in the front of the hotel.

Tomorrow: on to Montana, as we begin the long journey back from this, the northernmost that we will venture on the Great American Road Trip.