My friend in Washington lives in a valley with one large mountain between them and Mount St. Helens. You may remember that's the one that had a serious volcanic blow in 1980.

We had stopped at Mount St. Helens in 2002 and were amazed at the acreage of horizontal trees that had been flattened by the blast. This trip we found most of that cleaned up and most of the land replanted with tree seedlings. The immediate area around the destroyed mountain is being left to regenerate itself naturally. That will take a long time.

In my buddy's valley, there is limited irrigated agriculture with one rather large operation growing organic herbs for a national concern. A bit northeast is Washington's traditional apple region and a lot more fruit is grown as one moves south toward and into Oregon.

Red Delicious apples have fallen from grace in recent times and are being supplanted by newer varieties. The hottest idea in the area is to grow wine grapes where apple orchards used to stand.

We turned toward home the third week in October and quickly wondered off the main road in southern Idaho only to find ourselves in the middle of sugar beet harvest. I don't know much about sugar beets, but we quickly found the roads crowded with large trucks transporting the beets from the field to receiving stations.

There we saw piles of large, knotty, topless beets in piles that dwarfed the large loaders, which dwarfed their operators. The piles were outside, but there, too, most of the agriculture is irrigated, so getting wet may not have been an issue.

Pushing into Utah and toward the high mountains of Colorado, agriculture, except for grazing, is limited. All I can say is that it is a big area and has beautiful scenery along the way.

One thing I learned was that the east (lee) side of the mountains has a significantly different climate than the west side. In Montana, we saw a 20-degree rise in temperature in a few hours as we crossed east to west. Coming back, we found the eastern slopes and plains of Colorado covered with some snow, our first serious hint that winter is our next season.

I was surprised to see large swaths of corn, sunflowers and sorghum standing in snow-covered fields. At the Kansas - Colorado border, conversation enlightened us that first they get the soybeans, then plant the wheat, and finally worry about the corn. If it was my cornfield, I would have been worried.

Once past the Utah border, the car seemed anxious to get home so it picked up the pace. Even so, I marveled at the amount of un-harvested crops across from Kansas to Ohio and even here at home. We are witnessing either the blessing or the plague of a very moist year.

If I was smart I would stop right here, but I can't damp down the remnants of thirty years in local politics without this confession. I left home as a moderate or somewhat progressive Republican or independent or whatever. Not too far west of the Ohio line I transformed into a flaming liberal, which lasted until we hit the west coast where I became a right wing ideologue. Now that's rapid change.

We also saw over 140 species of birds including 19 new ones for me. We, at times, envy the year-round snow-capped mountain view my buddy has but you know it was pretty nice to be back in southern Lancaster County again after a wonderful trip.