The main commercial strip for Moscow, Idaho is on the west side of town, along Pullman Road. This street, State Highway 8, runs along the north boundary of the University of Idaho campus. Every kind of fast food place you can imagine is in this area and the preponderance of Moscow's motels are in this area. There is a La Quinta Inn on the very western edge of town. In fact, the property line is at the state border and the rooms on the west side of the motel are only about 20 feet from the Washington border. This is where I spent the night on my one and only trip to the area. The motel is actually on West A Street, one block north of Pullman Road, but it is very visible from the highway. The access street to La Quinta Inn dead-ends at the state border and there are two large, concrete barricades just in front of the street's end, a few inches inside Idaho. Just to the north of the end of the street is a tall, metal, yellow pole that is about 8 feet tall. This pole marks the state border. There is no fence marking the border here like there is south of the highway.
When Pullman Road crosses the state border, there is a building on the north side of the road that straddles the border. It is some type of agricultural association and half of the building is in Washington, half is in Idaho. There are many, many cases lie this all across the country and that must make for some interesting tax bills, not only when buildings straddle state borders, but also county borders and city borders.
The view of the Palouse Prairie and the dun-colored, grassy hills was very soothing to me. To me there is something simplistic, yet beautiful and awe-inspiring about grassland, especially an undulating grassland like the Palouse.
When I was in Moscow, there was a Walmart on Pullman Road. It was regular Walmart and not a superstore. I have heard that a new Super Walmart was built 8 miles away in Pullman, Washington and the one in Moscow has since closed, but there are rumors it will be renovated into a superstore and reopened, but I don't know if that is true or not. If the rumors are not true, I hope the town finds some type of use for this big, hulking brute so it won't just sit there abandoned right across the street from a university.
No comments:
Post a Comment