Day 6

Up through weird stuff to Coulee Dam

We woke quite early and hub went down to breakfast - only to return quickly, moaning that there was nothing there worth having, except the coffee! We had left the hotel by 9:30 and continued along the Oregon side of the river, driving through Hood River (nothing special) and The Dalles (huge dam!). I must say, that the Columbia River Gorge wasn't as impressive as some might make it out to be, although there was some very interesting geology along the whole route (hummocky chunks), which I must look up some time! I'd bought a copy of "Roadside Geology of Washington" in one of the visitor centers, but hadn't had time to even open it!

Bridge of the Gods

We crossed back over into Washington State at Maryhill and made a slight detour to the Stonehenge Memorial. I'd had no idea that this was a war memorial, to the soldiers of Klickitat County who had lost their lives in World War I - I thought it was a modern, feeble attempt to copy our Stonehenge! But it was, in fact, pretty old - built in 1918 and it was very nicely done and was situated in the most tranquil of settings; vineyards going all the way down to the Columbia River below.

For some reason, I was very tired this morning, and could happily have fallen asleep! But we stopped at Union Gap for lunch, at the Denny's there. Very nice. I forget what we all had though! From Union Gap, we entered very strange land, which was full of sagebrush! I couldn't call it desert exactly - but it was close to that. Further along the road, we stopped at the Ginkgo Petrified Forest. There was a long, steep walk up a hill, with specimens of petrified wood 'in cages', along this route. It wasn't anything near even approaching as good as the Petrified Forest in Arizona! There were also warning signs - indicating that rattlers were in these here hills - and the hub was happy to get out of there pretty sharpish!

We then went through lots of small towns, along what we think must be the Yakima Valley. This was all mainly farmland, and (most interestingly), the fields were 'labelled', with signs telling us what crop was growing in each! We stopped at a Dollar Store somewhere along here - and Paul went in and blew 2 bucks on 5 bottles of water and a pair of sunglasses! From here, there were views over to Mount Adams (yet another volcano), which must be absolutely huge!

Past Quincy and Ephrata, we entered into true plateau country, where the landscape was composed mainly of the build up of the lava flows of the Columbia River Plateau, which had been eroded by the Missoula Floods. We took a completely wrong turning towards Dry Falls and Paul and I sat in the car for quite some time, amidst all this strange scenery, waiting for the hub to return from his scouting mission up to the top of the hill! There were dragonflies all over the place - and I wouldn't mind betting that there were also plenty of snakes! Wouldn't have liked to have had to spend the night there!!

Finally we reached the Dry Falls Interpretive Center, which told the story of the Missoula Floods very well. The view over Dry Falls was spectacular. It was interesting to read the dedication to J Harlen Bretz there. That would make up for the years of abuse and banging his head on brick walls .....

Paul bought me a Washington State Parks pin and himself a sherrif's badge (!) and we continued on to Banks Lake and a very quick stop at Steamboat Rock State Park. I don't think that the cloudy weather did it any favours - I would expect it to be far more attractive in the sunshine! We reached Coulee Dam, late afternoon and found our rooms at the Columbia River Inn (another one!). The accommodation was really good. We had two rooms; ours had 2 queen beds and Paul's had one queen bed (but a big 'un) and a sofa bed. If I'd known about the sofa bed availability, we could've all squashed into one room! The rooms were prettily decorated out in pine and very comfortable. They didn't actually have much of a view over the dam, but, heck, that was only across the road! We looked in the garage, across the road, to discover that they had nothing worth buying to eat - and so we drove up to the Safeway at Grand Coulee. A great shop - loads of goodies. We came away with salads and cakes and cookies and all sorts of other yummy things. Oh, and cherries. I'd picked these up and, when we returned to our room, was told off for spending so much (he was checking the receipt). But they were only $1.99 or something, for the whole bag! Seems like we had been charged an awful lot more than that.... It took 2 strong people holding him down, to stop him returning to the shop to complain!! (It just wasn't worth it!). They had also charged us for a melon, which we most certainly hadn't bought!!

We looked outside, at 10:00pm, but we couldn't see the laser show - so we walked down to the dam. The show is beamed off the water, which must swish down the front of the dam, or it doesn't work (that's very technically explained!). The spray from that water makes you very cold indeed and we didn't have coats or fleeces. There was music and the lasers told the story of the dam. It was pretty, but not worth standing around too long in the cold for! We were soon back to our rooms!

An interesting day, with plenty to satisfy a geo freak! The weather hadn't been too bright though - and we hoped for better tomorrow. The cherries were nice, but never worth the price!

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[ Introduction ] [ Day 1 ] [ Day 2 ] [ Day 3 ] [ Day 4 ] [ Day 5 ] [ Day 6 ] [ Day 7 ] [ Day 8 ] [ Day 9 ]
[ Day 10 ] [ Day 11 ] [ Day 12 ] [ Day 13 ] [ Day 14 ] [ Day 15 ] [ Day 16 ] [ Day 17 ]
[ Day 18 ] [ Day 19 ] [ Day 20 ] [ Day 21 ]

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