2012/04/07

The Kennewick-Man Expedition, DAY 6


I rode a bike Mike lent me along a path atop an embankment of the Columbia River to look for a spot where the bones of Kennewick Man were discovered. Although I asked about three people along the way, everyone knew Kennewick Man but didn’t know the excavation site. I also could not find something like monument of it, so I turned back to the tent for today.



Ben Melia, son of Mike, visited me to my tent at 8 o’clock at night; it was my pleasure. Ben told me that he felt empathy for me because he had challenged a bicycle journey. We drove his NISSAN to downtown, and enjoyed a dinner at café with his friends, Cameron and Jacob. Ben treated me to it. As we were getting chilly with sitting outdoor table, we moved to Cameron’s house in same downtown. Surprisingly the wooden house with beautiful shape was built in 1905. Cameron gave me a warm word, “Sleeping in the tent should be cold and hard. You can stay in my house.”



Sunny dryness, old but well-kept, quiet and well-poised, and beautiful, this town is. Vintage cars look good in.

Diesel locomotive pulling long freight cars cuts across the town. Every time it crosses railroad crossings, it sounds a horn even at midnight. Whenever I come back to the tent and crawl into a sleeping bag, I hear the locomotive horn echoing throughout night sky of the town. I am enraptured, and feel peaceful in the sound which I can describe it as only nostalgic.