Central & Eastern Washington - Washington, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest - page 382

Information
Ellensburg Chamber of Commerce ( www.ellensburg-chamber.com ; 609 N Main St;
8am-5pm Mon-Fri, 10am-2pm Sat) For maps and information; the building is shared by the
US Forest Service and Ellensburg Rodeo offices.
Getting There & Away
Greyhound ( www.greyhound.com ) buses stop at the Pilot gas station at I-90 exit 106, 2
miles from the town center. The ticket window is in the Subway sandwich shop. Buses
here leave for Seattle ($26, two hours, five daily), Spokane via Moses Lake ($40, four
hours, three daily) and Yakima ($17, 45 minutes, three daily). Some Yakima buses con-
tinue on to the Tri-Cities and beyond.
Apple Line ( www.appleline.us ) runs one bus daily to Wenatchee, Chelan Falls, Pateros
and Omak.
Bellair Shuttle ( www.airporter.com ) runs five daily buses to Sea-Tac Airport and Seattle
to the east and Yakima to the west; fares are $7. It stops next to Starbucks on the Central
Washington University campus.
Yakima
POP 95,512
Not long after the Northwest's weighty clouds have dumped most of their precipitation
on Seattle and the Cascade Mountains they arrive in the parched east, lighter, whiter, or -
if you're lucky - vanquished altogether. All the more reason to pull into balmy Yakima,
the so-called 'Palm Springs of Washington' - not the state's prettiest or most interesting
city, but certainly one of its sunniest. If you can see past the limitations of Yakima's
rather dull downtown, the settlement's rural periphery beckons like an enologist's wet
dream, a kind of Washingtonian Dordogne without the historic villages but with enough
reputed vineyards to keep any French wine snob happy for days.
Founded on its present site in 1884, Yakima takes its name from the Yakama Native
American people, who inhabited this valley for centuries before an 1855 treaty created
the Yakama Native American Reservation.
One third of the city of Yakima's population is Hispanic.
Sights & Activities