About an hour out of the Coulee Dam recreation area, Millie and I were driving through beautiful agricultural country. Along each side of road were miles and miles of corn, wheat, rye and something with yellow flowers that I assume was mustard. We were deep in a conversation of "How can the government save the Social Security system" when a trooper passed us on a long stretch of highway with his blue light flashing.
He proceeded to drive about a ½ mile ahead of us, stop on the shoulder of the road, jump out of his car and wave us to the side. I knew we were not speeding and got my auto insurance papers as the young trooper came to the passenger side of the motor home. After Millie opened the window and greeted the young man with her usual smile and southern good morning, he said, “I’ve been following you for about two miles, I assume you didn't see me."
After we assured him we had not. He said, “I bet you wonder why I'm stopping you?" The state of Washington uses automatic tag scanning technology and my plate on the Jeep popped up as a stolen plate. He said if the system can’t read the state of the tag it alerts as a stolen tag. The camera couldn't read the name of our state due to the frame around the license plate.
The frame around my license plate is from the Special Operations Association. As the trooper had a military persona I assume he was just out of the service and our common bond smoothed over him having to chase us for 2 miles with lights flashing. Maybe he just saw us as a senile old couple happily rolling thru the hills of Washington without a clue or a care!
Anyhow he seemed amused at the thought of a stolen tag being on my Jeep. After apologizing and wishing us a safe trip we were all on our way.
We are spending our last night in Washington State in a Thousand Trails Campground (Little Diamond) about 50 miles north of Spokane. Tomorrow we pass thru upper Idaho and enter Montana. Our first stop there is going to be Glacier National Park.
No comments:
Post a Comment