Following up on the previous posts about export grain, etc., here's a pretty extensive batch of recent photos from Spokane's big newspaper about the wheat harvest currently under way in the hilly Palouse region of eastern Washington:[www.spokesman.com]

On Thursday we drove our daughter's stuff down to her apartment in Moscow, Idaho, to begin her junior year at UofI, and much of the way along U.S. 95 were were seeing combines out doing their thing, and grain trucks lining up at elevators, including a few which still stand at places where track was ripped out long ago. Returned home on a short stretch of route 66 (really!) then 27 through Palouse, Oakesdale, Rosalia, and Fairfield, Washington. Even paused to check out the new unit train loop and silos nearing completion at McCoy. More combines sighted en route. For some idea of the amazing feat that is Palouse hill harvesting, see here:[www.youtube.com]

And finally this morning, just half a mile from our house, we caught sight a combine about halfway done harvesting a wheat field alongside UP's SI route, with a bailer not far behind gleaning the stubble and coughing up large blocks of hay.

Bottom line, the grain is just now beginning to gather at the elevators. Give it until about mid September and you'll start to see the branch lines and short lines of the Inland Northwest swelling with larger trains of loaded hoppers.