While in Wilbur, Washington I’m having some ‘low energy’ days.  Not sure what else to call them.  It happens sometimes….a day, or a few days,  when I don’t feel really good, but I don’t feel really bad.  Blah days.

The weather has turned cooler, and much more comfortable.  We are here for 3 days.

We are camped 20 miles from the Grand Coulee Dam, and on the 2nd day, August 24,  we get ourselves into JR and drive through 20 more miles of wheat fields, to see the longest dam in the United States (almost a mile long).

Near the dam it’s warmer, at least 80 degrees,  and there is only one parking space in the shade, at the very end of the lot.  Someone has taken it of course.  Next to it, in an area where you drive, not park, there is shade, and that’s where I park.  I can’t leave the dogs in the sun, even with the windows down.  If I get a ticket, so be it.  I’d rather have a ticket than baked dogs. The parking lot is only about a quarter full anyway, and this is at the end where no one is.  Except….that one car.

There’s JR on the right.  The scalloped area there is the center part of the dam….the spillway.

Below are a few views of the dam.

This is the 3rd power plant, and by itself, the most powerful power plant in the United States.

In the foreground is the park below the visitor center.  I can’t get the whole dam in a picture at once.  This is the spillway and power plant # 3.  The other two are on the right side of the spillway.

Still not showing the right side.  Notice all the wires?

The visitor center is filled with interesting exhibits and there is a movie that I watch.

Sixty million dollars was authorized to build this dam by Franklin D Roosevelt, and it was started in 1933, during the depression, as a way of helping to employ the unemployed.  It was completed in 1942…ahead of schedule and below budget!

Twelve million cubic yards of concrete was used….enough to build a 6 foot sidewalk around the earth at the equator…twice.  It rises 550 feet from the bottom of the river, and is 500 feet wide at it’s base.

It contains 3 power plants, and the third, the most recently built, generates more power than any other power plant in the US, even without the other two.

Once completed it’s main functions were (are) irrigation, power production, and flood control.  The first order of business was to get the irrigation system working, but priorities changed, since WW2 started, and power production became the priority.  Farming and irrigation had to wait until the war was over.

What does ‘coulee’ mean?  it’s a geological term and means a ravine or deep gully, usually dry, which has been cut by water.

Near the dam:

Standing over this area, I could hear the hum in the wires….

Roosevelt Lake, behind the dam.

Many people were displaced when the dam was built and the area was flooded. These were mostly Native Americans, but not all, living next to the Columbia River.  The other very major problem is that salmon can’t jump over the dam.  Of course.  It’s even too high for use of a ‘fish ladder’, and it’s not even the only dam on the Columbia that salmon can’t get across.  Salmon fishing was what the Indians mainly did, to survive.

In all these years, no one has figured out how to get the fish over the dam!  Seems that minds that could figure out how to build this thing, could figure out how to get the salmon to the other side.  (???)

After I finish at the visitor center I drive down to the park below and the three of us walk the shore.  I consider….the miracle and the misery of this ‘man-made wonder’.

I’ve heard about the Coalville Tribal Museum just a mile or so away.  Even in my low energy state, I want to visit it.  I find some shade in a nearby church parking lot and spend some time in the museum looking at the exhibits, which are very well done, and talking to one of the employees about the salmon situation.

Coalville Tribal Museum

Below are of few of the many beautiful and educational displays:

All beading!

That’s enough for today and we travel back through the 20 miles of harvested wheat.  I consider going back the next evening for the Laser Light Show,  but that’s as far as I get…thinking about it.  It seems better to me to get in bed with a good book.

Friday, August 26 we leave Wilbur and drive 120 miles to Winthrop, Washington for a 3 day stay at Pine Near RV Park.  We’re coming back into the mountains, and my energy is returning.

I’ll tell you about Winthrop next time…