You gotta know when to hold em,

know when to fold em,

know when to walk away

So long as you spend money and don't impede anyone else from spending money Leavenworth will welcome you with open arms regardless of who you are.

I can definitely picture that. I alway figured they like the Palouse river and traverse out from Idaho via that. One summer I paddle-boarded down the Palouse river (I don't recommend it but it was a good adventure) and I saw more variety of wildlife in that day than the previous few months -including some elk way too close for my comfort.

Oddly enough all my moose sightings were south of Kamiak in the area around Rose Creek.

Thats awesome, what area out there? I use to run all around the farm roads and it was always super cool coming across one.

Eastern Washington, specifically NE corner around Spokane/CDA. Occasionally they show up in the Palouse but that's pretty rare, the couple I saw around Pullman seemed lost and had the look of "how tf did I end up in the middle of a wheat field"

Super unlikely to see one in Western WA, I think the one spotted around Rainier recently was the first sighting ever recorded in that area so unless you literally find that one it's probably not happening.

You went to a place where you know a lot of stupid people hang out and got annoyed that they say stupid stuff there

Very important advice here! Even in absence of any serious emergency you never know when you might have to deal with a huge delay on snowy roads and are far away for amenities.

This is only true if it really cold, otherwise I'll take good all seasons over cheap snow tires.

The difference between snow tires and good all seasons is not going to be enough to not have to put on chains if things get really shitty.

I love Leavenworth for the fact that its a ridiculous tourist trap and shamelessly leans into that identity, but I'm also usually going in the summer where it's the secondary attraction to the enchantments.

The mileage cost taking a U-Haul from Oregon to Leavenworth would be crazy.

A 4WD pickup still isn't that great unless you put some heavy stuff in the bed to even out the weight distribution on the wheels and know how to drive in snow. An RWD pickup is one of the worst possible vehicles for snow and ice.

100%! I forgot the name of Blewett thats why I said go around through Wenatchee and avoid all passes.

Just take hwy 97 through central WA instead of I5 and hwy 2 -basically same distance and you avoid the worst pass (hwy 2). If the weather is really bad take an extra detour at Ellensburg to go through Wenatchee. Typically not much snow via this route.

Get chains and learn how to put them on your car before the trip, you'll be fine. Be prepared for the drive to take a long time if the weather turns shit.

IMO the rental idea isn't very good -somebody's random 4WD that you aren't used to driving isn't going save you if you don't know how to drive in snow. I see tons of people in very capable vehicles crash in pretty mild snow, while the careful drivers going slow with chains on their fwd cars do just fine.

Fun fact the Palouse Prairie is the most endangered ecosystem in the continental US

Yes, but there's a few prerequisite technologies that we need to figure out before it will happen.

The key tech in my mind is:

• Fusion energy
• Near complete mastery of bioengineering
• Major space manufacturing

Need fusion energy for propulsion and powering the habitat.

Bioengineering is a catch all here for mastery of genetics and gene editing, artificial wombs, construction of artificial ecosystems, organism engineering, suspending animation, etc. We'll need to engineer ourselves and the things we wan't to eat to do well in low gravity and high radiation among other things. Extending lifespan into the 200+ year range and/or making suspending animation possible will help with motivating people to make the journey. Probably need artificial wombs as I can see pregnancy and birth on a spaceship being an issue.

Need to be able to build a big ship AND fix it along the way. If you're gonna have a self sustaining population of humans on this thing thats a huge ship with tons of redundancy needed for every system. You can't realistically build that by launching a bunch of little things into space on separate rockets, probably need asteroid mining and automated in-orbit construction around Earth or the moon. You also need to bring this capability with you if you want to do anything meaningful at your destination.

Basically once we're at a point where a lot of people already live in big o'neill cylinders around Earth some group of adventurous/crazy people will stick a few fusion rocket engines on one and head for the stars. It'll be good that they're already in a self-sustaining space habitat because the planet they go to is likely to suck, and they're gonna spend another 1000+ years in orbit seeing if von neumann probe-type robots and engineered microbes can get the planet somewhat livable.

Probably 100+ years before any human interstellar journey can even be considered.

Look up some of the old abandoned pre WW2 forts and gun emplacements on the west side, could be useful stuff

If you have a need for some rural areas there is some really interesting stuff in central and eastern Washington -generally some places that look unique and unfamiliar (to folks not from Washington at least) may be useful for creating a sci-fi world that doesn't just feel like Seattle with a few special effects.

• Any number of modern looking airbnbs in the middle of nowhere
• Channeled Scablands
• Frenchman Coulee
• Idk what of it could be accessed to film (safely and legally) at but there's all the old Hanford stuff out by Richland
• Plenty of small eastern WA farm towns that basically look abandoned
• Pioneer cemeteries
• Wind farms
• The wheat fields outside of Pullman post harvest will look like a post apocalyptic landscape
• Ghost towns like Bodie
• Leavenworth if you need a scene to take place in Bavaria for some reason or want to trap a character in a simulation thats looks like a tourist trap made up city