Have you seen any hops?

With all the microbreweries that the Northwest is famous for, I've often wondered where all the hops comes from and what it looks like. Well, I wonder no longer. It turns out that a large portion of the high-quality hops used all over the world to make beer cames from the Yakima valley in Washington State. While we were visiting family friends there, we took a drive through the agricultural valley and passed field after field of hops towering on cables that are strewn above the fields. This is what it looks like:

The part that is harvested is the flower bud - they are green and kind of look like a cross between a bell and a pine cone. In Toppenish, WA, there is a hops museum which we perused in about an hour. There was some interesting information about how hops is used both medicinally and in beer production, and the history of hops agriculture in the valley. But, not as interestingly to me, most of the museum was old equipment that they used to use in hops farming.

Toppenish is also the "City of Murals". I don't remember how many murals there are, but they paint a new one each year. You can see that there are murals painted on the hops museum as well.