Epic first two days August 26 - 27, 2013

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This was an epic couple of days travel. The 10 metre long RV took some getting used to on the road when we were expecting a four metre long truck camper. Once we entered the USA at Osoyoos the two days were spent on the Columbia Plateau alongside and crossing the Columbia River several times. Grand Coulee Dam and the scour lands beyond were beautiful to see again (our second time here).

This route follows columnar basalt cliffs several hundred metres high on either side as we drove along valley bottoms or crossed down and up again through these cliffs. They are a fossil rock record of past flood lava flows where later ice age rivers cut deep channels and left large and small erratic boulders on the farm land. Richard did not need to collect any columnar basalt samples as Iceland had given him a beautiful specimen for his rock cabinet.

On the high land above the Columbia River side cliffs there are wind turbines taking advantage of wind currents rising from below. In some places the whole landscape is covered with wind turbines perhaps hundreds of them, white and tall above the cliffs mostly turning in the gentle wind when we stopped to photograph.

We stayed near Quincy WA the first night in the midst of a very productive fruit area and beautiful rolling agricultural land. We stayed near Madras OR the second night, an oasis in the midst of poor lava boulder covered cattle grazing land. Two days travel and 1100 km. Now onto Crate Lake for some hiking.

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