Saturday September 4, Spring Canyon Camp, Grand Coulee, WA

130 Miles

Shocked to hear about the earthquake in Christchurch when we collected our emails this morning before leaving town, didn’t get a chance to check it all out, but sounds pretty bad.

We took a winding road to the east through the mountains to Republic. Lots of small ranches, and old dilapidated log houses in very arid conditions.

Republic turned out to be a very pleasant surprise, andold town with heaps of character. Parked and wandered the main street, everyone seemed really friendly. The town had been a gold mining centre and at one stage had been called Eureka.

South then through the Indian Reservation following a river, a really nice peaceful drive, very mountainous with small pockets of land.

Pulled off the road by the river for a lunch stop and not much later a truck pulled up. The driver, Pat was looking after his herd of 150 cows and calves that had been on the mountain range all summer and were coming back down to the river. Pat was of Indian descent and was able to get a permit to graze. Enjoyed chatting with him and finding out about farming cattle in this area. We had noticed large areas of flat farmland by the river that had not been grazed for many years, he could tell us that the government pays the owners not to farm it. Throughout the states there are millions of acres fenced and not being used, it is more economic to leave it unproductive, hard to understand.

The river we had been following opened out into a lake, part of the Grand Coulee dam system, and we had to take a small free ferry from Keller to cross to the other side.

We wound our way up from the canyon and couldn’t believe our eyes, a plateau with grain fields as far as the eye could see. It had just been harvested and the fields were still golden, although some were already ploughed under and being reseeded, guess they are hoping for some rain. Everything looks just so dry and the skies are showing no sign of rain. Temperatures once again in the high 20’s.

Back down into the valley and found a nice federal campsite over looking Lake Roosevelt. It was pretty full with families camping for the long weekend, but there were still a few sites available. It was great to see families boating, swimming and just enjoying the sun.