Aug 6-7 2010 Dry Falls and Grand Coulee dam, Washington

The Inn was full for the weekend so we had to move on. We headed north and visited the Dry Fall state park. When the great ice sheet over Canada melted it was dammed up with ice it was called Lake Missoula. When the ice dam broke thru a huge river ten times the flow of all the rivers in the world flowed thru in 48 hours. It surged down and made the Columbia river channel. Many lakes were scoured out called coulees. This area had a large falls to the left. It was 400 feet deep over these falls. There were many nice campgrounds on the coulees that would have been great had we had the motorhome.Or even our camping gear that was on the bus.

Dry falls

We were having lunch by this lake. It looked like the left photo. All of a sudden there were these sirens and the falls increased to the right photo. This river come from a dam and has a power plant above the falls. When they are not making power there is less water coming over the falls. When they need more power they let more water out of the dam thru the turbines and the falls look like the right photo. Pretty exciting.
We found an hotel on the Coulee with a cancelation and got this great room overlooking the lake

sunset from our balcony, The wild Life

We found this pinwheel garden outside Electric city. A man made it over his life and people stopped to see on their way to see Grand Coulee damn. When he passed away it was donated to the city in his memory.
Wind mill garden

Grand Coulee damn. We took a tour of it, pretty impressive.

power plant at the dam, Steam boat rock in one of the coulees

Look who we ran into on the road by Dry Falls! Jeff on his bike.
We went to Moses Lake for another night. Visited a classic car museum, and a water park.  the next day we went back to Spokane and picked up the bus. Woo Hoo.  We had reservations to go to a RV rally in Redmond, Oregon the next day so we drove half way. We stayed at a  nice RV park on the Columbia River. Then took off the next day for the Redman Rally.

sunset on the Columbia River