Where do you live anyway?

I thought I would get the ball rolling on this blog with a little bit about where I live now.  I live in the city of Pullman, WA.  It plays host to Washington State University and is only 8 miles away from Moscow, ID, which plays host to the University of Idaho.  Both universities are the land-grant universities for their respective states.  Pullman is located in Southeastern Washington, right next to the Idaho border.  The area that I live in is affectionately referred to by all that live here as the Palouse.  The Palouse is named after the river that flows through here and it is characterized by a lot of rolling wheat fields with a couple very small "mountains" popping up every now and then.  Right now, the fields are either just dirt or slightly green with the small winter wheat that some farmers planted back in the fall.  I am very excited about seeing the fields in May when the wheat is much taller and starts turning all the fields yellow.  Spokane is 1.5 hours north and Seattle is about a 5 hour drive from here.  I can get to some good mountains in about an hour in most directions, I can get to the desert in two hours, Mount Ranier in four, and the Pacific Ocean in five.  There is a lot going on here, which will hopefully make for an interesting blog.

For some perspective, here are some maps to give you an idea of where I am relative to most of my readers.

As you can see from the map above, I am at about the same latitude as Sault St. Marie.

As you can see from the satellite picture, I am surrounded by quite a bit of farm land (actually, just outside my back window is a very large wheat field- but I will save those pictures for another post), but the terrain also starts to change a lot immediately south and east (and north) of me.  I also have a ton of hills here in town, which actually make commuting to school by bike harder than anywhere that I have ever lived before.  And it brings a very literal meaning to the joke about going uphill both ways.

I hope this helps you all get a better picture of where I am.  Of course, future posts will only help that even further.