Back to the Mountains

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After last nights excitement we had a relatively quiet night in the bustling metropolis of Coulee Dam, Washington - our room at the motel even had a view of the dam! Our plan for the day was to get up and take the first Dam tour, at 10am. But…

Statistics

Starting Destination: Coulee Dam, Washington
Ending Destination: Concrete, Washington
Ending Destination GPS: N: 48° 32.458’ W: 121° 52.795’ Elev: 242’
Miles Driven: 215.9

Grand Coulee Dam - up close and Personal

…we were running a little late and arrived at the visitors’ center a little after 10, only to find out that the tours started on the other side of the dam and you need to be there 15 minutes before the next starting time of noon!! So we walked around the visitors’ center and looked at the exhibits, learning all sorts of interesting (but inane) facts about the structure. Like the Dworshak Dam, Grand Coulee is a gravity based dam, it also… Contains enough concrete to pave a sidewalk 4 feet wide and 4 inches thick twice around the equator; is 550 feet high; supplies irrigation water for over 500,000 acres of farmland; and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake has 600 miles of shoreline! But statistics are not the whole story - we also viewed a movie on the initial construction. Initial construction, because the dam was modified in the late 1960’s/early 70’s to allow for the addition of the third power plant - this was interesting as they had to demolish part of the original structure! After the movie we drove around to the other side of the dam for the tour of the third power plant, dutifully there 15 minutes prior - only to have the same guy at the visitors’ center tell us that it would be 20 minutes before the start of the tour!! Thus our tour started out on rather an interesting note, the tour guide fancied he had quite the sense of humor, unfortunately, we didn’t get any of his jokes!
On the other hand the tour was interesting—we walked on top the crest of the dam (taking all the pictures we wanted) and rode a glass fronted elevator down the front of the dam into the powerhouse. What we were allowed to see in the powerhouse was certainly impressive—everything was just huge, no not just huge—gigantic!!
To give you some perspective, the 2,000 ton gantry crane they use to move everything around required 550 gallons of paint to cover all the surfaces; the generators are 80 feet in diameter (the blue circles in the picture above are the dust covers!)... Also, the throughput of the each generator is twice the annual flow of the Colorado River… Amazing what facts tour guides like to impart!! Maria also tried out the movie function on her camera and got a quick shot of the generator shaft rotating - unfortunately it doesn’t really look like anything much when you look at the clip!! However, the most interesting thing about the whole tour was learning what we would have been able to see if we had visited the tour prior to 9-11. Apparently the whole site was open to the public - you could walk in all the corridors inside the dam structure, into the powerhouse - everywhere, and they also had helpful signs to explain what was going on… We were just about 5 ½ years to late!!

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Mountains here we come!

After the tour it was time to move towards our next destination - the Cascade Mountains. We followed highway 155 through the Colville Indian reservation, getting stuck behind several logging trucks—we weren’t sure where they were going ‘till we got to Omak—we turned the corner and low and behold there was a “chip board” plant! We then turned onto highway 20 - The North Cascades Parkway - we were a little apprehensive as the map says “closed in winter,” but after our Beartooth Highway adventure we were not quite sure what the definition of “winter” was. Thankfully the road was open the whole way!! We drove through some small towns, stopping in Twisp to try and get a better Washington State Map and Winthrop to try and get some lunch meat - we were not successful in either case, but we did get lots of (not) helpful and interesting information from the visitors’ center in Twisp and saw the board sidewalks and store fronts in Winthrop. All this time the road was rising gradually into the American “Alps,” Carl asked Maria whether they really did look like the Alps and she said “she couldn’t remember as the last time she had been that close to the Alps was in 1976!
We drove through Washington Pass and Rainy Pass both of which were not very high by “Rockies” standards, but the scenery was certainly impressive. In proceeding past Winthrop our rationale was that we would be closer to the visitors’ center and wouldn’t have so long to drive back to the campsite as we wanted to do some hiking… Unfortunately, this meant it was getting dark by the time we were driving through the Ross Lake National Recreation Area - we didn’t stop at many of the information boards or to look at the dams… We could do that tomorrow. We were more interested in finding somewhere to stay - our rationale was that the names of the towns on the western side of the part were the same font size as on the eastern, so they would pretty much have the same sort of amenities - boy were we wrong!! After much looking, we finally settled for the night in Concrete, well close to Concrete - back in a camping cabin!!

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Carl’s Travel Trivia

Yesterday’s Answer: Presidents Truman and Roosevelt
Today’s Question: A two part question (1) What is the electrical generating capacity of Grand Coulee Dam, and (2) how many cubic yards of concrete was used in its original construction?

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Comments

[Marv Bush]

Grand Coulkee Dam Trivia question
It can generate up to 6.5 million kilowatts of power and has 12 million yds. of concrete. Sure hate to have to mix that by hand. We're back. Had a great trip and beautiful country. Marv Thanks Troy for filling in .