Day 4 of this trip had been a wildcard for a few weeks now. While we were headed through towns too small to have early season baseball, the only option left was hockey. Three nearby teams still remained in their playoffs: the ECHL Idaho (Boise) Steelheads; as well as the Portland Winterhawks and Tri-City Americans, who were both playing in the Western Hockey League conference semi-finals.

We couldn't wait around in Boise for the Steelheads to come back in three days, leaving us with just Portland and Tri-City (Kennewick, Washington) as options. I'd been watching and cheering on Portland for weeks because of wanting to visit their Veterans Memorial Coliseum, but the Winterhawks would sadly lose to Everett before our trip even began.

Thankfully Tri-City swept lousy Victoria! This left us checking for updates on the Everett/Tri-City matchup until it was Everett leading the series 3 games to 1. It was only the morning prior that I woke up and saw Tri-City had forced a 6th game, which we could now shoehorn into our trip!

I still had questions about the worth of an additional 5 hours of driving just to see a rink from the 1980s in a town I didn't have any reservations about, but F it though. How many Western Hockey League games am I going to have the opportunity to attend in my lifetime?

Since we had to wait until two days ago just to see if Tri-City's season would continue, I didn't have anything planned along this route.

Crossing into Oregon an hour outside of Boise, we pulled into the ghost town of Lime Oregon around 2pm. Lime was close enough to our original route that I knew about it even before we changed our plans to include the Tri-City home town of Kennewick, up in south-central Washington State.

A post office was established in Lime in 1899. While it was never very much of a town, it was a sizable cement plant that once produced 1.2 million barrels of cement.

The Acme Cement Plaster Co. built the first plant here in 1916, before the Sun Portland Cement Company bought that plant and built another for producing cement in 1921.

Into the 1970s, as the nearby limestone was running low, limestone was then shipped in from 16 miles (25.7km) away in Durkee. Once a new cement plant was built in Durkee though, the end of Lime Oregon arrived.

The plant closed in 1980 and Baker County took possession of it in 1999.

Getting off of I-84, I had a hard time believing this, but it appeared that the demolition crew had arrived at the same time.

An article from 2 days earlier talks about demolition starting, which is something I missed when I only researched this place prior to leaving for Colorado.

So now, instead of going inside, about the only thing I managed was getting yelled at for standing too close to the ditch along the roadside.

Another thing that didn't require previous research was Baker City, since I discovered and coveted this place on my last Oregon road trip.

While I didn't get nearly far enough east back in 2015, Baker City was now right along our route and open for a midday walk to check out the scene.

Checking out Streetview and various images of Baker City, I wanted to see this place because there were so many gorgeous stone and brick buildings.

This is because when a lot of surroundings towns were still in the wooden building phase of the wild west, Baker City prospered because of nearby gold mines. This led them to being the home to many fine buildings, like the Italianate Geiser Grand Hotel (1899), Baker City City Hall (1901), and the Baker County Courthouse (1909).

Baker City is the type of place that has an entire historic district on the National Register of Historic Places and all of these buildings contribute to it.

This Elks Lodge may not belong in the historic district but I love buildings painted with this funky seafoam colour.

(This is the impressive house across the street, which I didn't take a picture of, lol.)

Many of the buildings built after 1900, like the county courthouse above, are constructed of volcanic tuff that was quarried 12 miles (19.3km) away in Pleasant Valley.

(Volcanic tuff is ash that has been ejected from a volcano, which hardens into rock once deposited.)

Both Isy and I really wanted to stay in Baker City, but we had to keep going. Following a stop at the Crossroads Carnegie Art Gallery that's inside their old library, we grabbed coffee at a local shop and soon merged onto I-84 to continue north.

We drove through some more beautiful country in the Blue Mountains and soon we were into the grassy plains of north-central Oregon.

Before heading into Washington, I decided to stop at the last possible beer store, thinking Washington might be conservative and limit beer sales.

The Lucky Dog Lounge was grimy and decrepit, with a rundown parking lot and lots of shady characters about. This was a seedy truck stop, but eventually I relaxed with the amusement of a landscaping crew who were all bullshitting, breaking each others' balls while going into the cooler for cold Steel Reserve. I nodded approvingly at the choice.

We only had a 30 minute drive into Isy's 8th state, before reaching Tri-City and the three amalgamated cities of Richland, Kennewick & Pasco.

The Tri-City Americans play at the Toyota Center, which is located about halfway between Kennewick & Richland but not really near either of them. There are hotels around the arena, but it's also the corny, big chain area with Target, Texas Roadhouse, Chuck E. Cheese, etc. And while Kennewick didn't have any reasonably priced motels downtown, I ended up finding a great deal on the Shilo Inn in Richland.

(Pasco looked to be the roughest of the three cities & also the furthest, so it was easily eliminated.)

It was nice to arrive in Richland early and relax for a little bit. Going out on the exterior walkway of our inn, I could see the Columbia River lazily meandering by, which was much different than the last time I saw the same river flowing through the immense Columbia River Gorge.

I was really enjoying Tri-City. It had a strange, contradictory feeling of being in a stark and parched place, but inside of a little oasis created by irrigating the Columbia River to saturate the nearby lands and make them home to much more vegetation. With it also being humid out, this all combined to have a feeling like the American South, but still up in the rain shadow of the Cascades.

Calling a cab to bring us over to the hockey game, I enjoyed the sights as we passed over the Yakima River Delta, even as I had to try and tune out the cabbie's 15 minute rant about Uber.

I have to give him credit though, he dropped us off as close as he could without jumping the curb out front the Toyota Center. Stepping out of the cab, I had to do the limbo just to get all of the arena in the shot.

I really would have liked a further away picture of the concrete and glass 1988 structure, but we were already running late so we headed inside.

Tonight would be my first Western Hockey League (WHL) game. The WHL makes up one third of Canadian Junior Hockey, along with the QMJHL & OHL, so it was fun to finally get a WHL rink after 9 OHL and 16 QMJHL rinks.

This late in the season, we were also watching playoff hockey, as Tri-City was fighting to keep its season alive in Game 6 against the tough Everett Silvertips. This was the conference finals, meaning the winner would go on to play Swift Current to become the champion of the entire Western Hockey League.

For someone who hasn't even seen a QMJHL playoff game, I was excited with the prospect of the playoff atmosphere that was to come. Except Tri-City only averages about 4000 fans and that number really plummets on weekdays (this was a Monday night). The announced attendance for this game was only 3033.

The Toyota Center is one of those arenas built out in an industrial park, making it seem much more monumental than similar counterparts built into actual cities.

Entering into a small lobby, we picked up our tickets from the sleepy box office, then started to walk around in order to grab beers and find our seats. The concourses were your average width and there were constant views into the seating bowl from the little 6-stairs that led upwards.

That is, except for the end zones of the rink, where we walked up a short incline and then were level with the entrances into the seating bowl. I believe this is so busses can pull right into the arena via the loading dock.

I struggled to think of a comparison for the Toyota Center, suddenly realizing that I haven't been to many rinks from the 1980s. The two I could think of were Scotiabank Centre in Halifax (capacity: 10,500) and Joe Louis Arena (an NHL rink) - which both don't really compare to a 5700-seat junior rink with one level of seating.

1 - I'm aware that Joe Louis was opened in 1979.

Entering into the seating bowl, attractive red seats lined the ice, with a lower roof than you would expect, supported by arched beams that gave the rink a feeling of intimacy and legitimacy. Overall, I thought it made for a fine place to watch a hockey game & it was far less bland than I envisioned.

Of course a 27-year-old arena is an antiquated eyesore nowadays, as a 2015 article says the owner of the Tri-City Americans is lobbying for Kennewick, and if not Kennewick then Pasco, to build him a new rink. In the article, the Toyota Center is criticized for roof leaks that lead to watery stairwells and missing drop ceiling tiles, as well as visiting hockey teams calling their locker room "Alcatraz" because it's such a disgrace.

(I'm of the mind that the opposing team should be made to feel uncomfortable, but whatever.)

Fortunately Kennewick doesn't seem to be in a rush to go into debt building a new coliseum. They contribute $200,000 a year towards repairs, plus make up further operating debt with hotel taxes and a piece of the Americans' ticket revenue. The 2015 article states that the city has already updated washrooms, concession stands, the Americans' weight room, study area, added a second elevator, and updated the home dressing room.

But not the visitors' dressing room? LOL.

Furthermore, in 2019, a team-city partnership was agreed upon to complete further upgrades, upgrades that should lead to an extension of the Americans lease and keep them at the Toyota Center instead of building a new rink.

The Toyota Center also has to be given credit for having beauties walking around in Bob Probert jerseys (thumbs up).

I was pretty excited to see all-world goaltending prospect Carter Hart - now of the Philadelphia Flyers - but he only managed 18 saves in this game. I guess having Morgan Geekie (Carolina Hurricanes, 67th overall), Jake Bean (Hurricanes, 13th overall), Juuso Valimaki (Calgary, 16th overall) & Michael Rasmussen (Detroit, 9th overall) on offense will do that.

The game was pretty entertaining as Tri-City staked themselves to a 5-2 lead with 9 minutes left to go in the third. Just as I was sad that we wouldn't be able to see Game 7 in Everett because it was too far away, Everett raced back with 3 goals in 4.5 minutes to incredibly tie the game at 5-5. Suddenly the prospect of playoff, season on the line, overtime hockey was here. I grabbed an extra beer just in case we were here for a while, haha.

Sure enough, the game went to overtime. And while wondering what we'd do in case of three, four, or five overtimes, Tri-City took a penalty 5 minutes in & Kevin Davis then ended the Americans season with a power play marker.

Just like when I saw the Kingston Frontenacs season end, I was surprised with my level of sadness while watching the home team take their last, dejected skate around the ice.

Following the game, we were up for a nightcap and told the cabbie to bring us to a bar. Not to the local "Axe & Fiddle" type pub or microbrewery, but more of a dive bar. Some place where he wouldn't normally drop us off.

The cabbie nailed it when he dropped us off at Whiskey River. I raced along the bar at the sight of all kinds of cheap beers like Rainier, then we settled into our seats and breathed in the atmosphere of all this wood grain.

We finished up the night with a bit of a disagreement, so knowing that the best way to smooth things over with a woman is a visit to a romantic lighthouse, that's where we headed the next morning. This especially works well if the lighthouse is made of four sections of pre-cast concrete and only built back in 2010.

(Oh yeah, this is also after stopping at a bicycle shop to buy spokes to fix my busted wheel, haha.)

This was the Clover Island Lighthouse, part of the redevelopment of Kennewick's Clover Island that's happened over the last 10 years. In reading about this development, I found it interesting that one thing they had to fix was that Clover Island had been used for years as a dumping site for stone and concrete from demolished buildings. If anyone was taking down an old building in Kennewick or Pasco, they'd just come here and dump the cornices and balustrades into the water.

We then stopped in downtown Kennewick at Little Randy's Diner, to celebrate my first Washington State lighthouse with chicken fried steak and eggs.

Just the perfect type of a nice, light meal to get one ready for a long drive back into Oregon.

Continue the next part.