Day 23 - Spokane

Dry Falls
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Today I have crossed further east through Washington state and am now right by the border with Idaho in Spokane, which incidentally is the largest city between Seattle and Minneapolis. Apparently it is a city of neon at night so I shall take a wander round later when it is dark as my motel is quite central I think. The drive from Wenatchee took me through lots of arid lands again – not what I expected in Washington ‘the Evergreen state’. I drove through quite a few trailer park towns which were less than enthralling but had the new Zero 7 album for company so it was too bad until the radio station I had my iPod tuned into got overtaken by a Jesus station again – very frustrating. I listened to that for a while as it was the sermon of the day. Apparently Russia is organising an Islamic coalition against the US, Israel and the UK. The evidence for this is apparently all in the Bible – the guy explained exactly where and if you changed all the names of places in this particular section then voila Russia was masterminding the whole thing. I don’t suppose that anyone had informed him that you could change the names of anything to get the results you wanted. After being both amused and rather disturbed by this for a while I stopped at a place called Dry Falls which is a big canyon (rather like the ones I should be coming across in Utah in a couple of weeks I think, although more brown, less red). It was quite cool although at the time it was a bit cloudy so the photos haven’t come out as well as I would have hoped for. I drove on north to Coulee Dam which, according to the Lonely Planet, is the world’s third largest hydropower producer. There were signs to this thing from about 60 miles away so I thought that it should be worth a trip. The scenery on the way was really lovely, but again, I didn’t get a chance to take any photos unfortunately as there were no places to stop. I arrived at Coulee Dam visitors centre, was informed that I could not take any bags, camera cases or ‘fanny packs’ – (just for Charlie that one) into the centre. All very security conscious I noted. It must be something amazing. I had a wander around the museum that was also in the centre and learned all about hydropower. Seeing as this Dam had its own museum I was looking forward to seeing it finally. Then I saw it. Yes it is fairly big. But not that big. And not that pretty. The surrounding scenery is nothing to write home about either. In fact I thought it was a bit of a waste of time and effort. All round. However, I did find a picnic area (yes, by the Dam, there’s even two local villages – one called Electric City and one called Grand Coulee Dam they are so proud of the thing) and had some lunch in the sunshine. I then drove on to Spokane passing through 70 miles of fields – that’s a lot of grain. There was a lot of harvesting going on and it was quite dusty all around. I think I’m going to have a nap before heading out to see the bright lights of Spokane later. Tomorrow I head across Idaho and into Montana so bye bye Washington!

Dry Falls
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Distance travelled today – 199 miles.

Distance travelled today - 199 miles

Bearwatch – still 0 thank goodness, although tomorrow I hit Montana and the home of bears!