To continue our tour of downtowns and bookstores. Downtown Kennewick made little impression, mostly service and light industrial. Not much in the way of retail. Pasco seemed to be almost entirely Hispanic.

No, all the shopping is done in Big Box strip malls; imagine Bend's Third St. as nothing but one big box after another. I never I thought I'd compliment the Forum, but it is relatively easy on the eyes. Tri-cities are as though you unwound the cluster of boxes in the Forum, and each had street frontage. They must just have endless amount of space there.

So row after row of faux 'village' exteriors, (Potemkin village, that is), facades with a bare rudiment of architectural detail. About as bland as architecture could be. All beige and tans. They look like they are made of plaster and balsa wood. Yet another thing we are bequeathing to our grandchildren; buildings that I predict are going to be huge, ugly, rotting corpses upon the landscape someday.

Hard to believe that Americans have decided that is what they want in shopping.

The only town we saw that I thought had real charm was Walla Walla. You can see why they're afraid of being Bendized. It did, indeed, remind me of downtown Bend 20 years ago.

We shot down the Freeway to Portland to visit son Toby and Lisa. On our way home over Santiam, we went through Oregon City, which seemed really beat up. Visited our last bookstore, a 'paperback exchange' that seemed to consist almost entirely of romance novels. Gave me the willies.

Then on through the towns I mentioned earlier.

Bend really does have something. It just has a vibrancy and a charm that most of these places don't have.