Does the thought of traveling to another state to shop put you off? Consider, in the time it takes to park your car in a typical big-city downtown shopping district you can drive the eight miles from Pullman to Moscow, Idaho which--although its population is smaller--has more, bigger, and more varied stores to shop in.

Moscow's name makes no more sense than Pullman's. The area was known as "Paradise Valley" until settler Samuel Neff filed the papers to build a post office in the fledgling town and decided to name it after his home town of Moscow, Pennsylvania, which he thought it resembled. The Pennsylvania town had in turn gotten its name because it possessed a large bell which reminded its residents of the Great Assumption bell, a famous tourist attraction of Moscow, Russia.

Local residents pronounce the town name "moss-COW," like the animal. When I returned from a trip to the Russian city I was asked whether people there said "moss-COW" or "moss-COH. I had to reply that Russians say "mosk-VAH."