vicarious roadtrips report

My parents' roadtrip is going excellently. Bafflingly, however, they managed to navigate the Columbia River Gorge without seeing any waterfalls. Utterly mysterious how this happened: there are seventy-seven waterfalls! So many waterfalls, in fact, that they are divided into eight different classifications, and one of them is the most-visited tourist spot in all of Oregon. Nonetheless, they did visit the fish ladders at Bonneville dam, which I had missed. Evan gave them an engaging tour of LIGO Hanford Observatory, and then they did visit a waterfall, the 200 foot Palouse Falls (photos) in the desert to the east, which they described as "awesome." Presumably they are now in Spokane, having traveled further on the mysterious Pasco-Kahlotus highway (among others).

In further roadtrip news, my brother emosnail is indeed off on a Reality TV roadtrip, circumnavigating the country in eleven days. PBS's "Roadtrip Nation" production sponsored three groups to travel the country with film crews in giant green RV's--my brother is not in one of these groups, but, rather, PBS gave one of his friends $600 to go on a roadtrip, take some video, and make some blog entries. Not bad. With five folks driving in shifts, they covered Orange County to New Orleans in less than three days, picked up a friend, and departed for Atlanta. They seem to be making significant progress in proving the adage that goes something like, "The Interstate Highway System allows you to cross the country in 40 hours, while seeing none of it,"* but I am still a little envious.

* Does anyone know the quote I'm looking for?