Travel day to the Pacific North West

 Saturday 21st October 2023

We packed up pretty quickly, maybe we are getting the hang of it? And set off for a slow 270 miles to get us to the Pacific! 

We had been driving a lot of our previous trips west on the I90 which for the most part was a quiet Interstate but this leg was very busy. A neighbor at our last stop told us about the apple farms along the way near Leavenworth so I hoped to be able to find one we could stop at while towing and we did. A nice roadside stand with rv friendly pull in area. I would have loved to have bought lots as the stand had some unusual varieties and it would have been great to have stewed and froze them for pies and crumbles but freezer space is too much of a premium. 

Orchard

As we approached Seattle area and crossed the Cascade mountain region the weather turned from a pleasant Fall day to low clouds, no sun and rapidly dropping temperatures. You hear about the Seattle region rainy weather and it's all true as we would find out in the coming weeks.

Smoke? No, low clouds.

Truckstop

Cloud!

Are we there yet?

Tacoma Narrows Bridge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge

We had been driving through narrow busy roads nestled in thick pine forests so we did not have any advance visual that we were about to cross the famous Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I was on my cell looking up Tacoma as I thought there was a famous song with this in the title when John says "oh wow look we are crossing the bridge where all the cars fall off!"

This was the bridge in 1940 that when the wind hit it at a certain resonance it made it sway and bend violently. I'll insert a you tube link here, go watch, I'll wait for you.......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XggxeuFDaDU

Scary!

The photo looks black and white, by this time of our journey the sky was totally grey.

Puget Sound

We began our morning in the desert coulees of north east Washington and ended up in the very damp pine tree forests of  the Pacific North West.

Next post I will tell you where stop number 32 was.

Towns and a dangerous climb

 Saturday 14th October 2023

We went for a drive south to check out  Electric City, Coulee City and Ephrata. All towns were pretty dead. Once again I am unsure how people live in these rural areas. There was barely a supermarket and with no out of town big box stores these cannot be blamed for the downfall of a town's commerce. Fun fact these towns may not have a decent grocery store or laundry but they will have a marijuana dispensary.

I have not been able to do laundry at this stop as there is not one at the park and the nearest is a 45 mile drive! 

The road was blasted through the rocks

Sunday 15th October 2023

I had been looking at Steamboat Rock all week and wanted to climb up it. All Trails hiking app billed it as a medium hike with 800 feet climbing. Ok we can do this. So we got kitted up and away we went.

The beginning was on sand so not too bad but then we hit a very sketchy path of soup tin size rocks (scree) that made the incline very hard to navigate. We soldiered on hoping that was the worst but turned a corner to see we needed to climb up a rock ledge then there was more scree.

This was feeling more like rock climbing and as we had Morgan with us and neither of us wanting her or us to get injured we decided to turn around. Instead we walked around the base of Steamboat to another area of the reservoir where we sat for a bit.

The very steep path

We got about third way up, views were great.

Can see the campsite

Other pictures from our stay at Steamboat Rock 

Grand Coulee Dam

 Friday 13th October 2023

John took a day off and we headed to Grand Coulee town and took a tour of Grand Coulee Dam. The tour took an hour, was on a first come basis and was free. After having our belongings checked by police and passing through an x-ray machine we loaded up onto a mini bus and were driven to the entrance to the dam. We then rode a Westinghouse elevator down into the heart of the dam to see the pumps. After that we drove along the top of the dam. You used to be able to drive along the dam but since the Oklahoma bombings and the 9/11 the area is very heavily guarded. 

The tour was very simple and I have read reviews criticizing it for it's limited access and content but we enjoyed it. They have a laser light show each evening that would have been cool to see but that had ended for the season.

Grand Coulee (map) is the largest dam in the Columbia River Basin and one of the largest in the world. Everything about the dam is large: it is 550 feet (167.6 meters) tall, measured from its foundation in solid granite, or approximately 350 feet (106.7 meters) from the downstream river surface to the top of the dam.

The main difference between the Grand Coulee Dam and the Hoover Dam is their size. The Hoover Dam is 726. 4 feet (221.4 meters) tall and 1,244 ft (379 m) wide. The Grand Coulee Dam is 550 ft (168 m) tall and a whopping 5,223 ft (1592 m) wide!

https://www.usbr.gov/pn/grandcoulee/visit/

12 pipes and tunnels each large enough to drive a truck through have water pumped through them over the hill to fill Banks Lake

When the final generator came online at the Nathaniel Washington Power Plant in in 1980, Grand Coulee Dam became the largest hydropower generating complex in the United States with a generating capacity of more than 6,809-megawatts supplying up to 21 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. In addition, Canada receives power under the Columbia River Treaty. Grand Coulee Dam is operated as part of a coordinated federal system of hydroelectric facilities, which provides 35% of the entire power supply of the Pacific Northwest.