Category: Traveling the hiways and byways

There is a tour of the dam every hour, so we left thinking we might be able to make it into the 10 tour.  We were a bit late for that so we had to wait for the 11am tour.  It was already pretty hot that morning when I took a walk out the dead end road that goes along Lake Roosevelt to snap a few pictures from that side of the dam while we waited.   I had heard some time back that they pump water up to a lake during low electric usage times (night time) and then let it flow back when they need more power generation during the day.

Our tour guide was leading her first tour ever,  so everyone’s questions went pretty much unanswered.   I know the government runs this tour, but it’s got to be the most inefficient thing I’ve ever seen.    They have you drive over to the other-side (east) of the dam from the main road to join the tour and go thru metal detectors, no purses, fanny packs, or backpacks.    Then you get on a small bus and drive right back the way you drove in, then all the way back to the top of the west side of the dam you passed quite a time back.   They park right next to the main road on the edge of the dam  and you walk into a building and into one of the largest elevators I’ve seen that wasn’t a huge loading dock type elevator with doors that opened vertically.   Supposedly you can fit 56 people in this one, although we were pretty tight with 28!   You go down about 80 feet to an observation deck over the main pump and pump generators.

The main pumps there are just to pump water up to the reservoirs that feed the agriculture canals.  Those are the green things in the foreground.   You might be able to make out the grey ones all the way back.  They are pump/generators.   They also pump the water up to the reservoirs, but when more power is needed, use that water from the reservoirs to generate electricity by letting gravity pull it back down thru the impeller and out into the river again.

After just a few minutes in that gallery we were back in the elevator and off to the buses again.  But then they drove across the top of the dam (it was the old road pre-9/11. )  They made you use the seat belts for that part of the ride.  Why, who knows?   They did drive a bit odd on top of it, not following in a line, but using both sides of the road.   No idea why, but it was strange.   At the other side, where they added powerhouse No. 3 back in the 60’s, the buses each made a U-turn and drove halfway back across, where they stopped and let us out, all the time explaining that in pre-9/11 you could just walk anywhere “inside” the dam for as long as you wanted.  Kids from the high school were getting lost inside the dam often, so they started teaching a class to tell them that at any staircase, just walk up and eventually you would get outside.  (Must have been some pretty stupid high schoolers to need that class.  A simple sign could have had the same effect.)

We walked around for a few minutes, over to the long drop side down to the water, and then to the side where the water was just a few feet below us,  snapped some pictures and got back on the bus for the long ride all the way back to the east side again.   Not sure why they didn’t just continue over the top of the dam.  We had made that U-turn less than 75′ from where our cars were parked.

Had the tour started at the visitor center,  just a few feet from the pump house, the tour would have taken  15 minutes and not required any buses or drivers.    Instead there were two bus drivers, two buses and two tour guides and about 50 minutes to do the tour.   I would not suggest taking it,  kind of boring and it took way too long for what you got to see.

We had read about the laser light show they put on every night at 10pm, so we made plans to be there.   They open all the gates at the top of the dam to let a lot of water come over the spillway.  It was very loud  once they started opening them.  The laser show is a history of the area and the building of the dam and what it does for the area.  It was done mainly for kids, but interesting to see the laser animated pictures projected on the water cascading down the face of the mile-long dam!

One thing we did learn on the tour was a little about the new pump house built between 1967 and 1975.   I hadn’t realized we were in a Dam Race with the Soviet Union,  they were going to build the largest dam in the world so we extended the Grand Coulee so it would be larger then theirs.    It also allowed them to put in much larger generators and pen-stocks than the original dam has.   They told us, that each of the six new pen-stocks can transport 2 or 4 Colorado Rivers amount of water in a comparison with the Hoover Dam and generates 3.5 times the amount of electricity.  6.8 Gigawatts vs Hoovers 2.0 Gigawatts.

I always thought of the Hoover Dam as being very large, but seeing the Grand Coulee made me realize the Hoover dam is pretty small in comparison.   The GC is just a few feet short of a mile long.

Here are some pics from the “Resort” we stayed at outside Electric City.   No ATT or Verizon signal out there,  and the WiFi was unusable.   $100 a night,  never again!

We left the Port Townsend area Sunday morning with a quick navigation around the the asphalt sealing team that was about to start the second half of the park road repairs.    We headed south toward Tacoma and Galloping Gertie.   Well, I guess it’s really the replacement for Galloping Gertie.   I noticed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on the map and that reminded me of a video we watched as a kid.   It was on one of the routes we could take east, and that settled the path to take for me.

Today as we got close, I could see there are two spans now.  Each looks different.   I’m wondering if they reused the old towers for one of the spans?    Once over the bridge and onto I5 north, we hit a lot of traffic.  Sunday morning?   Geez.   Between Seattle and now Tacoma, I think they are attempting to wrest the “worst traffic” award away from LA.

We took a shortcut over to the I-90 that, based on all the red I-5 roadway on google maps, would save us a bunch of time sitting in bumper to bumper traffic.   We made it to Cle Elum fairly early in the afternoon and pulled into the park to check in.   We got a shady spot, which was good as the thermometer said it was 101 degrees there.   We parked in a pull-thru site, so there was no need to detach the car in this heat either which was very nice.    Luckily we were still up in the mountains not far from the Snoqualmie Pass, so not down in the desert which is eastern Washington.     We were off early the next morning before 10 and crossed the Columbia River again about an hour later down in what looked like desert all around.   After a bit we started heading north off I-90 toward Soap Lake.

That is one large lake out there.  Not sure how it doesn’t just evaporate away with all the heat we were experiencing.    After finally passing Soap Lake —  which took a long time — then there was another long, large lake and another after that.  We were to stay on Banks Lake, which looked to be another in that long line of large lakes in the middle of nowhere.

We filled up along that way at Shree’s Truck stop in George, Washington,  Nice Name!    Diesel fuel was a reasonable $3.32.  It looks like it may go down when we hit Montana.   The odd part about Shree’s was the cash price was only 1 cent less than the credit price.    Most places that have both prices have been 10  cents difference.   So the 1 cent doesn’t really make sense when my Costco Visa gives me a 4% rebate on fuel.

We didn’t get on the road till after 1 pm on Thursday afternoon.   It was turning out to be one of the warmest days since we left San Diego over a month ago.   We headed west on the 101.   Yes, it’s 101 west up here where it makes a big loop around the Olympic Peninsula and reconnects back to itself down near Olympia, WA.   We are still wondering how we missed the other 101 as we must have driven right past it on our way north on the 101.   Kathy was very curious what it would have been called there,  also 101 West?

Anyway,  we went searching for Salt Creek Park and Tongue Point that juts out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.   Not long after leaving the park,  which is buried in the woods, we came around a sharp corner and a small deer was slowly walking across the road.   I had to slam on my brakes,  and the deer wasn’t fazed.  It just kept slowly walking till just before the guard rail where it bounded over it.   Unfortunately, it looked like a steep drop on the other side.   Kathy was upset at me for almost hitting it and causing it to jump into the abyss.  It didn’t even seem like it noticed us to me.

After about an hour’s drive, we found a small sign for the park campground.   I assumed we still needed to drive further along the road to find the point, so I kept driving.  Within a couple of minutes we were down at a large crescent-shaped beach with actual waves.   We were at least 30 miles from the ocean at that point, so seeing what looked like ocean waves was a surprise.   There was this nice looking campground on the other side of the road from the beach and we saw a few folks crossing the road to get to it.

We kept driving and the road kept getting closer and closer to the water until the road started to climb a cliff along it and then turned in toward the highway, all the time getting narrower.  It wasn’t wide to begin with and was just a lane wide when I decided to pull into a dirt road to check the map.   I noticed that we should have turned off at the park sign, so we turned around and headed back to it, passing the beautiful beach and wondering how cold that water was in the middle of July.

Turns out that the park was bought from the military after it was decommissioned due to not needing 16″ guns to guard the entrance to the Puget Sound anymore.    They removed the guns but left the bunkers.   They reminded me of the gun emplacements I saw in Normandy many years ago.    After driving thru both bunkers, we headed over to check out the campground in the park.  It was quite nice, but was raised up from the beach below at least 50 – 60 feet, and the edge of the campground was eroding away with just orange barrels and netting to keep you from falling down it.

While there, I programmed Hurricane Ridge into the GPS and we started out to find it while heading back toward our home base for the week here.    There was a lot of red on the map, and we figured out quickly what it was when we arrived at the beginning of the road that goes to the top:   road construction and lots of it, probably 10 miles of the 19 miles to the top.   That was a long, slow trip up the mountain, but worth the wait as at the top it felt like you should be singing Edelweiss in the Sound of Music.   The scenery was spectacular!   This could have been the place they filmed the mountaintop scene.  Huge meadows and stunning views in all directions from a short hike to the overlook at the top.

Lots of deer up there too.   Dusty would have been in heaven if we would just let him run free!   They didn’t appear to notice the visitors and would walk right past you as if you didn’t exist.   We snapped a lot of pictures up there!   It was just such a stunning vista with all the mountaintops ringing the area; and if you glanced north, the view of the strait and Vancouver Island in Canada was right there too.

To think I really wanted to go to the rain forest, but the drive there and back was over 6 hours.   Way too much time in a car.

We stayed up at the top so long that the road crew was all packed up on the way down, so we made it down in record time.    On the way home, we decided to find another Mexican restaurant and we found one in Sequim with a large patio and pretty good food for being so far from Mexico.

It was probably a 30-minute drive back home from Sequim.  When we got back, a neighbor came over while I was still gathering stuff from inside the car and said he needed to apologize to me.   I asked what for.  Turns out earlier in the morning I had asked why he had a small plastic step outside his coach where his automatic steps should be.   He mentioned they had stopped working recently.   I had asked if he had checked the magnetic sensors that are there right inside the door, and he said he had.    Turns out he hadn’t and it got him thinking.   Later he looked at them and they were not mounted back correctly after having someone install new carpet in his coach.    I can now see he has moved that plastic step aside and the steps are deployed!

On Saturday I got a text from Verizon that I had used $50 of International Roaming already.   I had to call them and it turns out while we were at Tongue Point my hotspot latched on to a Canadian cell tower.    I told them I wasn’t in Canada and asked them if they could turn off International Roaming.   They did and credited the $50 charges too.   Turns out its $2 per megabyte for international roaming data.  Ouch!

I really wanted to take Kathy to Friday Harbor for her birthday, but the timing from Port Townsend just didn’t work,  either a long waiting time or not enough time to make it onto the next ferry; so we opted for a trip to Seattle.    The ferry system takes a bit to get used to.   Only some of the routes you need to make reservations, but those are not tickets, just $10 each reservation.  It’s unclear if that money is applied to your ticket or not.   It may just be charged if you are a no-show, but that wasn’t clear either.    Also, to get to Friday Harbor, you have to take two ferries, and the second ferry is over an hour drive from the first ferry landing.   It’s an all-day thing, and the best route I could find wouldn’t have gotten us back to the coach till after 10 pm after leaving around 8 am.  Sounded too much like work to Kathy.   I had to agree.   Although it’s only just getting dark at 10 pm.

So we opted to drive in to Seattle,  just one ferry ride, no reservations needed.    It’s about an hour drive to the ferry on Bainbridge Island and then it was about a half hour’s wait to get on.   While waiting I walked over to the water and snapped a picture of a couple spare ferry’s parted just south of us.

It always amazes me how many cars and trucks can get on one of these “real” ferries.   It reminded me of that Monday night Larkspur ferry, except this time it was zillions of cars and trucks streaming out for a long time.   There were lots of pedestrians too, but they were up on an overhead walk so you had to look for them.   They vehicles were right in your face.

Finally, the first row got the signal.   We were in the fourth row, but it was just a few minutes and we were heading onto the ramp down to the ship.    Turns out Kathy made a video while I was driving on.   There was so much glare, I had difficulty seeing the guys directing me till my windshield went into a shadow, and then they were pointing me in two directions.   I chose to the right.

We parked and walked up two flights to the sun deck where it was a gorgeous sunny morning with a cool breeze.   I headed up toward the bow to snap some pics.   We could see Seattle way off in the distance.   As soon as the ship got out near the Sound, it got really windy,  making it difficult to keep the camera steady.   It took about a half hour to cross the Sound and land right downtown.   The crew has this down to a science.  The chime went off, then the speakers announced it was time to get back to our cars.   We weren’t in the car more than  2 minutes before I had to start it and move off the ferry.    A very efficient operation.

We headed out to find the Pike Marketplace.  I had been there once before on a business trip back in 1998 or so.  It was a Wednesday afternoon and the place was packed.  Even the streets around it were packed with people that seemed oblivious that there were cars driving around them.    Somehow as we turned onto the street right in front of the market, a car started backing out of a space.   My first assumption,  it was probably a handicap spot.  But it wasn’t, must have been our lucky day.   We pulled in about 15 minutes later as that’s how long it took the folks to back out with all the people walking around their car like they didn’t exist, and then them doing the same to me as I inched forward toward the spot.    It took so long I was thinking I wouldn’t get there in this lifetime.

We got out and walked over toward a small park at the north end.  By then it was just about lunchtime and the park was crowded with people.    Dusty found just the right tree and all was good with the world again.    We crossed back across the street and entered the market.  Must be a great place for pickpockets, as “really crowded” was a huge understatement.

They sell all sorts of junk in there.   Surprisingly there were even a few produce sellers in the mix of jewelry, soap, pictures, clothes shops, and artsy things.   We found a hole in the wall to each lunch as we were very hungry by the time we got toward the southern end of the market.

After lunch Kathy wanted to vamoose that place.   I think both of us were feeling claustrophobic by then.    That’s when Seattle started to suck.  The streets were really steep, traffic was horrible with cars and pedestrians, and it was only Wednesday afternoon!  We missed a ramp to get over to Lake Union where I figured it would be a bit calmer, but attempting to get around that block was tedious to say the least.  We couldn’t turn and all lanes went on the “unmarked” on-ramp to highway 99.   And then within a mile or so it ended on the left side of I-5 north with the next off-ramp a quarter mile up the road and on the other side.   Needless to say,  we couldn’t get over for close to a mile,  way past the off-ramp we needed.   We ended up getting off somewhere near the WU campus,  even drove right past their expensive football stadium.

The traffic here was almost as bad as downtown.  I’m starting to dislike Seattle… did I already say that?    Anyway, we finally got to Lake Union, and to my surprise, there wasn’t anywhere to park.   It was getting late and we didn’t want to find out what rush hour looked like; so I mapped a way back to the ferry, bypassing the freeway that we saw was completely stopped on the southbound side as we were going north a bit earlier.   We took an interesting drive on older mostly residential streets that eventually got us back downtown and very close to the ferry.

Unfortunately, Google took us to the ferry car loading ramp, but it  had just moved about a mile south from where Google thought it was; so we again had to reroute to the new location.    We finally made it into the lot and queued up just as a ferry was shoving off.    Great, another one-hour wait for the next ferry,  but at least we weren’t out in that traffic anymore!!

We finally got back around  5 pm and it felt like we were gone 18 hours.   After that day,  Kathy said she no longer thought it was a good idea to take the motorhome on the ferry across to Seattle  on our way east.

We took off around 10 am on Saturday morning to find the Johnston Observatory at Mount Saint Helens.   It was about an hour ride on some of the smoothest roads we have encountered while driving around this country.   Incredible views along the way with bright blue skies and few clouds hanging around.

On the way there, as we came around a corner, my vision got blurry looking at the trees.  I immediately started wondering what was wrong, some sort of eye problem or maybe a stroke?   I was figuring out all the scenarios of what was happening to me when Kathy exclaimed that all the trees were giving her double vision.    Holy Cow,  it was the trees!!  The forest service had planted thousands of Nobel Firs to reforest the land, and seeing them all in a row made them look blurry.   It was uncanny.   I had never seen anything like it before.   You can almost see it in the pictures I took, but when driving thru there it’s very surreal.

We passed by quite a few view points along the way up.    But I think the best view as at the observatory.   The guy that was at that spot the morning it blew didn’t have a chance in hell, it looked like the mountain had aimed at that spot when the side blew out.    I had read the book about the area a few years back and the guy from the USGS that was there the morning it blew was only there filling in for the normal volcanologist that had to fly to California for some reason I cannot remember.

After exploring Fort Stevens, we mapped a way to Cannon Beach via Seaside, two very touristy towns.   I wanted to check out Haystack Rock and some of the beaches and hopefully have lunch somewhere on the water.    It was very cloudy when we started out; but as soon as we arrived in Cannon Beach, the sun came out and it was warm with a small breeze,  practically perfect weather once we got there.

Once you get a bit south of the town center (chock full of tourist shops) it gets a lot nicer.   But there wasn’t anywhere on the water that would allow us to bring Dusty;  so after a short while, we headed back north to see if we could find the Mexican restaurant we had passed.   All the pet friendly places were right on the main drag of the town, within a few feet of traffic and all the car exhaust.   It’s Hwy 101, a busy road on a summer afternoon,  not what I would call a great place to have a meal; although you couldn’t tell that from the jam-packed patios, so we kept traveling.    It was bizarre that as we left Cannon Beach, the cloud cover socked us in again and it started to drizzle like they are in some sort of weather bubble.

We never found the Mexican place and decided to stop at a small place on the highway called Ruby’s Kathy had noticed on the way south earlier,  not part of the chain of the same name; and they had a dog on their signs, so how bad could it be…    It was a pretty cool little place where Dusty was welcomed inside.   Kathy had a large chef salad and I got the day’s special,  1/2 rack of short ribs.   They were very good.  They weren’t Phil’s ribs, but the next best thing to them!

We headed back to Fort Stevens after our late lunch.