Grand Coulee

Thousands of years ago an immense blanket of glacial ice covered much of the northern hemisphere.  Behind and beneath these sheets of ice were raging rivers pressing to flow.  When the ice dams broke, the rivers raced over what is now the American Northwest.  Along the course, the waters littered the land with building-size boulders.  This action was repeated over and over creating the high desert landscape of eastern Washington and other states.

In the early 1900s two men had an idea to control this landscape by building the biggest concrete structure in North America.  This structure, begun in 1933 and known as the Grand Coulee Dam, became our last destination on this trip.

 Our guide through the pump generating plant gave us a lot of “dam” good information (her jokes were endless).  First intended as a source of water to reclaim the rich soil, the dam was instead needed as a source of electricity for the weapons industry of Washington State during WWII.

Today it provides water for thousands of acres of farms and lakes and rivers for all types of water recreation in addition to generating electricity.   All this was interesting, but we were captured by the beauty of the area.

We were also interested in the quirkiness represented by the Gerhke Windmills.

The native tribes viewed the dam as an end to the salmon fishing that was a major part of their lives.  Their story is told at the small but excellent Colville Tribal Museum.  After our too brief time in the museum, we drove onto the reservation to the burial site of Chief Joseph whose homeland in Oregon we had previously visited.

On the recommendation of our “dam” docent, we dined at La Presa, an excellent Mexican restaurant.  Then we returned to the dam for the nightly laser show.  Unfortunately, it was a rather cheesy history of the land and the dam; perhaps because it is thirty years old.  Next year they will have a new one.  Maybe they will change the musical finale from  Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America” to the Woody Guthrie “Oh, Columbia” that is on display in the dam museum.

Our campground was located on Sun River/Dry Falls, an area once with falls far greater than Niagara and now walled with basalt etched by the repeated action of those ancient waves. 
 

During the night, it was not waves that rocked our “boat” but fierce winds that caused our coach to rattle.

Under the still morning air, we drove the scenic byway created by those prehistoric floods.  It was a lovely ending to a great trip.