Pia Hallenberg

You know you’re close to Walla Walla when the brown scablands are interrupted by fuzzy-looking green patches on the hillsides. Those dark green patches are vineyards. The other indicator is the increased frequency of “Please don’t drink and drive” signs. The Walla Walla Valley has become synonymous with great wine. A combination of ideal soil, long, hot summer days and cool nights has turned Walla Walla into one of the more successful wine producing areas in the country.

As Cliff SiJohn tells the story, a few teenage girls and a few young boys were asked to move almost 1,000 head of horses from around Post Falls, over Mica Peak and into the land around Worley, Idaho. This was soon after a coalition of American Indian warriors defeated Col. Edward J. Steptoe at Rosalia in 1858.

If your household includes a speed-crazy teen who's not old enough to drive a car yet, here's an idea: Take the family go-kart racing. At FastKart, anybody can let loose that inner Dale Earnhardt Jr., racing around the indoor track while friends and family cheer from the sidelines. For the less adventurous, the place has a wide selection of arcade and table games.

Spend any time on a bike, for fun or commuting, and at some point when you're facing that big old hill on your way home, you're bound to wish for a ride that's solely downhill. The Route of the Hiawatha is exactly that, unless you decide to ride all the way back up after finishing the 15-mile descent from Taft, Mont., to Pearson, Idaho.

If you live in the Inland Northwest, chances are you've already been to Ritzville. Driving on Interstate 90 you've stopped for coffee or gas, travel weary, your mind already at your final destination miles and miles away. The next time you stop, plan for a longer break and discover what's really there – just off the interstate.

There are many reasons why Idaho is called the "Gem State," and one of them can be washed right out of the mud at the Emerald Creek Garnet Area, seven miles into the St. Joe National Forest west of Clarkia. Here, you can dig and sift and wash all day – or as long as your back will hold up – looking for star garnets in the rough. And, you can take them home at the end of the day.

When it comes to road trips, some people like to plan every detail. The maps come out weeks in advance, and the Internet is scanned for good deals and hotel coupons. Estimated arrival and departure times are set, itineraries are published on the fridge and the pressure to have a "fun vacation" is wearing on everyone's nerves long before anyone leaves the house. So here's another way: It's called a "right-left-straight adventure." All you need is a car, some food and a vague idea as to when you'd like to return home.

Today is a special day for the Eliow family: They'll have dinner together under their own roof for the first time. Georges Eliow and Akout Agang are Sudanese and members of the Dinka tribe. In 1987, a civil war forced them first to leave their home and later to leave their country via separate routes: Eliow ended up in a refuge camp in Syria before moving to Lebanon; Agang walked for two months to meet him in Beirut – but she had to leave her then 2-year-old son, Eliow Jok Eliow, behind with family in North Sudan.

There is no better time than summer to really get to know a city. Many of us are creatures of habit, driving the same way to work, picnicking at the same park and taking the same evening walk, so here are a few pre-planned routes to get you out of the daily rut:

To discipline a llama, just send it on "timeout." At least that's the method Monica Phillipy applies when her llama Little Dude begins to show a bit too much attitude. Not that Little Dude seems to listen.

Hercules. Galena. Lucky Friday. Star. Sierra. They sound like the names of racehorses, but in North Idaho's Silver Valley everyone knows these are the mines that have shaped the area's boom and bust cycle since the 1800s. At the center of the Silver Valley – or as locals like to say, "at the center of the universe" – sits Wallace.

You can't exactly grab a tiger by the tail, but you can get pretty darn close to the big furry creatures at Cat Tales, a private zoological park north of Spokane. Cat Tales opened in the summer of 1991 with four big cats – those who haven't been there since will have a hard time recognizing the place today.

Most people know him simply as "that guy who did the runners at City Hall" or maybe "the guy who did those horses out by Vantage." Few could pick him out of a lineup.

On a Thursday morning, the Dishman Hills Natural Area is one of the quietest places in Spokane. A couple of cars sit in the parking lot. Walk through the log building at Camp Caro, and the traffic noise from Sprague Avenue and scratching intercom from car dealerships fade in the background.

Coeur d'Alene School District 271 is considering a policy change that would ban students' use of cell phones from the moment they walk on campus until the final dismissal bell, including during lunch and breaks. A draft of the proposed policy is making the rounds among the 17 schools in the district.

Once upon a time there was a zoo in Spokane's Manito Park. Goats and kangaroos, bobcats and bears, bison and mountain lions were some of the wild animals people could see there. At the center of the zoo, in front of the bear cages, sat a little concession stand that catered both to humans and animals. "Built in 1923, the 'peanut shack' sold snacks for park visitors and peanuts for the monkeys. It is located at the intersections of Manito Place, Tekoa and Loop Drive, once the site of a natural pond," write Tony Bamonte and Suzanne Schaeffer Bamonte in their book "Manito Park: A Reflection of Spokane's Past."

If penguins migrated through the Idaho Panhandle, they'd have the perfect layover in Wallace. Across the river from the Wallace Inn sits a pile of snow so high it's visible from Interstate 90. Sure, it's cratered and crusty, but that doesn't mean the pile can't be good for something other than gawking: The Wallace Business Community Association is taking wagers on when the snow will be gone in a contest called The Big Snow Melt.

When you think of blind people and dogs, the first thing to come to mind is probably a Seeing Eye Dog and the last thing is perhaps the Iditarod. That's until you meet musher Rachael Scdoris.

Kevin Tsuchida is a precocious boy. A fourth-grader at Wilson Elementary School, the 10-year-old has a vocabulary like an eighth-grader. He doesn't simply like dinosaurs, he studies paleontology. He's not just into bugs, he enjoys entomology. He doesn't have a rock collection – no, he's interested in geology.