But It’s a Dry Heat

My husband and I traveled to Spokane again last weekend to visit family. It was only 64 degrees for the high temperature in Seattle the day before we left, but we knew it would be hot in Spokane. And sure enough, on Saturday, July 12, the high temperature in Spokane reached 91 degrees.

To me, the heat felt good. It felt like summers from my childhood. Spokane’s weather is more like that of my hometown of Richland than Seattle’s weather is. And Spokane is only an hour or so from Coeur d’Alene Lake where my parents had a cabin when I was in high school. I love the greenery that Seattle’s cooler, wetter climate nurtures, but I am most at home in a desert climate, like the weather in Eastern Washington.

I never got used to the humidity in the Midwest. In Kansas City, 90-degree temperatures were frequent in the summer, but they came with 90 percent humidity. In Spokane on Saturday, when the temperature was 91, the relative humidity was around 20 percent. Quite a difference.

There’s an old saying in desert country when the subject of hot weather comes up: “But it’s a dry heat.” In hot temperatures with low humidity, the heat feels more tolerable because people’s sweat evaporates more quickly, which makes them feel cooler. Of course, it’s easier to get dehydrated because of the rapid evaporation, so it’s very important to drink a lot.

In summers when I was growing up, we lived beside swimming pools and rivers and lakes whenever we could. Getting into the water and then out felt so wonderful, our skin cooling as the water evaporated. In Missouri, getting out of a swimming pool felt more like getting into a sauna—not much change in the atmosphere.

I enjoyed my two days of dry heat in Eastern Washington. But I didn’t enjoy our travel time. We traveled on I-90, the fastest route between Seattle and Spokane. But there was a lot of road construction resulting in frequent slowdowns.

One of the major construction sites was at the Vantage Bridge across the Columbia River. The river is impressive—much wider and deeper than the Missouri River at Kansas City. But there are few bridges across the Columbia. The Vantage Bridge has been in place since my childhood, and it looks the same now as it did then. The current replacement of the road deck began last year and will continue until 2028. So we have several years ahead of us before the project is completed.

There are huge bluffs on both sides of the Columbia River at Vantage. As we climbed up from the river on the west side of Vantage on Sunday toward the summit at Ryegrass, about ten miles beyond the bridge, I thought I saw a mountain poking over the horizon. Could that be Mount Rainier?

Then we reached the summit, and it certainly was Mount Rainier. I asked my husband to take a few pictures to show the magnificence of this mountain, which dominates the landscape whenever it is visible. He didn’t get the most spectacular angle of Mount Rainier, but this photo gives you the idea of what we saw.

There aren’t any mountains like this in Missouri.

It’s times like this that I am glad to be back in my home state, where there are mountains, desert, and dry heat.

What do you like about your home territory?