On the road to Walla Walla

In a little more than a week, Greyhound will eliminate bus service to hundreds of Western towns, including 10 in Eastern Washington and three in Idaho’s Silver Valley.

Here is an account of a ride on the Spokane-to-Walla Walla route Wednesday. Two towns on that trip – Walla Walla and Ritzville – will lose Greyhound service. The trip covers about 180 miles and takes a little more than four hours, passing through Cheney, Ritzville and Pasco.

9:30 a.m. “You’re the first ticket I’ve sold to Walla Walla today,” says the counter agent as she processes my $30 one-way ticket.

11:08 a.m. The bus leaves the Spokane Intermodal Center with 19 passengers on board. Only one other rider is bound for Walla Walla. As we climb up the Browne Street ramp onto Interstate 90, the driver tells us the rules of the road. No smoking. No drinking. Keep the music down. And absolutely no standing forward of the yellow line.

11:30 a.m. We arrive at the Cheney exit and leave I-90 to head into town.

11:35 a.m. The bus stops along Cheney’s main drag, First Street, to pick up one passenger, a teenager with multiple piercings and a carry-on filled with CDs. Only a small sign on the street indicates this is a Greyhound stop.

Noon Outside Sprague Lake, Kimberly Orellana’s 3-month-old baby starts to cry but is quickly comforted. Orellana and her two kids have a long trip in store, down to Santa Maria, Calif. They won’t arrive until Thursday evening.

12:27 p.m. We arrive in Ritzville, where passengers get a 10-minute rest stop at the Zip’s restaurant. Most leave the bus to stretch their legs. Some buy drinks. Pam Hill, who’s heading home to Portland, takes a smoke break. “The bus station in Spokane is never open. I had to go down three times to buy my ticket,” Hill says. No one starts or ends their trip here in Ritzville.

12:42 p.m. Back on the road and heading toward the Tri-Cities along U.S. Highway 395. Two brothers on their way to Boise start a card game of war. Another passenger cranks up the heavy metal on his CD player.

1:13 p.m. We pass a motor home towing a small station wagon. It’s not the first vehicle we’ve passed. This driver is trucking. And at this height, passengers get to peek inside semitruck cabs and see what brand of soda the driver is drinking.

1:25 p.m. We fly past a group of Washington State Department of Ecology youths in hard hats and orange shirts, picking up trash by the side of the highway. About half the people on the bus are sleeping. The teen across the aisle turns up his music. Is that Metallica?

1:54 p.m. The bus arrives in Pasco, 19 minutes behind schedule. We change buses and say goodbye to folks bound for Oregon and California, including Spokane Valley resident Dana Jones, who is visiting her wildfire-fighting boyfriend in Lakeview, Ore. She has to return home by Aug. 12 because that’s the last day Greyhound will operate in Klamath Falls, where she makes her shuttle bus connection.

2:15 p.m. “Wally World”-bound passengers, as our new driver calls us, board a different bus. Only seven passengers are along for this ride. Bainbridge Island high school senior Rebecca Sivitz is headed to a debate camp at Whitman College: “The bus times were more convenient, and a plane ticket would have been $300.”

2:40 p.m. The bus travels along U.S. Highway 12 and the Columbia River. A stench fills the air near a pulp mill. The passengers try to ignore it.

3:07 p.m. We’re in farm country. The bus passes several vineyards, onion patches and barnyard critters on the way into town.

3:19 p.m. The bus pulls into the Farmer’s Co-op in Walla Walla. Three passengers get off. Jackie Piatt gets on, headed for Baker, Ore. Without the bus, she doesn’t know how she’ll visit friends in Walla Walla. “Maybe I can hire someone to take me,” she says.