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Here are some of the stories that grabbed our readers’ attention this week.
Sam Elliott has a voice like a bear — big and strong, serious and smooth.
You may have heard him intone, “Only you can prevent forest fires,” while the mouth of Smokey Bear moves on TV. Or, you may have caught Elliott saying, “Support the campaign for Clark College, ensuring a bright future,” over appealing images of our local community college. Those Clark College Foundation spots ran in 2013.
Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! While you can’t Cruise the Gut this summer, on July 15 you can definitely Cruise the Couve.
“When it was clear that (Cruise the Gut organizer) Phil (Medina) was going to back out, a bunch of local businesses all sat in a room and figured out how to move forward,” said Bryan Shull, the owner of Trap Door Brewing in Vancouver’s Uptown Village.
“The businesses that stepped up to help from Day One … are all on Main Street,” he said.
Shull is now the project manager and owner of a new organization called Cruise the Couve, which has jump-started the mobile homage to vintage cars that Medina launched in 2009 but decided not to stage this year — taking much of Vancouver’s car-loving community by surprise.
Along a stretch of Highway 99 in Hazel Dell, people with bright T-shirts and colorful signs stood waving, smiling and beckoning passing motorists to participate in a tradition that’s becoming more closely associated with unincorporated Clark County.
“This (business) is a win-win for everyone,” said Beau Leach, the burly and friendly general manager of TNT Fireworks, standing outside the cavernous tent stacked with fireworks on Wednesday, the first day fireworks went on sale in unincorporated Clark County.
“Except those that don’t like the noise.”
He said that he has for sale 12 truckloads of Roman candles, sparklers, mortars, cakes and other fireworks that can match each customer’s taste for colorful explosions.
State Highway 14 was closed to traffic Tuesday after a rig crashed in the early morning hours, spilling hot oil onto the highway nine miles east of Washougal. The state Department of Transportation expected the road would reopen this morning.
The tractor-trailer hauling two tankers of hot oil was traveling east on the highway around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday when the driver approached a rightward curve going too fast, Washington State Patrol Trooper Steve Robley said.
Residents of Vancouver may soon be limited in how many cats, hens or rabbits they can keep on their property.
On Monday, Vancouver City Council voted to advance an ordinance that would prohibit residents from keeping more than five adult cats, five adult hens or five adults rabbits on their property. Residential properties larger than 10,000 square feet would be allowed an additional hen or rabbit for each 1,000 square feet, under the ordinance.
