Toppenish, WA... you ever heard of it?

This is where I grew up. An itty bitty town smack dab in the middle of the Yakima Indian Reservation. When I lived there, the buildings looked normal (well, as normal as they can look for a town with only about 3000 people. The buildings were 'old' looking until we had a Dairy Queen move in which was the only 'fast food' place in town and they had the most delicious hamburgers and milkshakes! They were nothing like the fast food franchises of today.... :sigh:

Oh well, that's getting off my topic.

The last time I visited home, the old town fathers decided to make my hometown a tourist trap! A bunch of artists, some of them are famous even, and a handfull of local artist wanna-be's got together and painted old time murals all over every building they could find. Yes, it made the town a tourist attraction. Yes, the murals are very well done and depict scenes from the past that were of significance. But, for me, when I go home it's just not the same. Now there's a covered wagon that will haul you all over town to look at these murals for a price (and if you drive around town, you can see every mural and take all the pictures you want of them for free), the traffic is now horrible due to the visitors who jam up the main street and all the side streets. No longer is it the friendly little town where you could go and always bump into a friend and always find a place to park right in front of wherever you wanted to shop.

I thought I'd take the time to share some of my pictures and let you know about it, because although I hate what they've done to my hometown, it is very interesting to see the murals. And the last time I was home there were 68 of them, so it's not just a couple buildings... every June they paint another one somewhere. I'm wondering what they're going to do when they run out of buildings to paint on!