MONDAY, SEPT 29

MONDAY, SEPT 29:

    HOME!!  Dissolved in tears of relief & gratitude for the safe trip of over 11,000 miles (11,080 to be exact).

     Before we even got inside the house, 2 sets of neighbors – Jim & Mary Erkmann and Marty & Mary Jacobsen – came over to welcome us home.  What a wonderful neighborhood & community we live in!!

     When we were getting ready to leave this morning, we remarked how empty that lovely campground was – just a few stragglers like us.  How different it must have been just a few weeks ago – probably full every night.  Another very visible reminder of the changing of seasons and the inexorable march of time.  As we take things out of the RV and put them away until next year, it reminds me of taking down and putting away Christmas things every year.  Another marker of time.  As I get older, I find myself involuntarily wondering what changes will there be by this time next year?  What unanticipated joys?  What sorrows?  On our trip this year, my Aunt Joyce died.  My last aunt, and the one I knew the best, both as a child (I’d spent a week at her house each summer with my cousins Larry and then baby Scott, while cousin Cindy would come to our  house to stay with Lynn) and as an adult.  Not sure that I’ve absorbed the finality of it yet.  But I feel the knowing that it’s another link to my childhood and family now gone. 

     Enough melancholy!   Time to relish our spacious, clean house!  And to relish Missouri.  It’s not Washington or Oregon or Montana, but as we traversed south and east from western Iowa today, especially a while after Kansas City on I-70, it was so nice to see the transition from flat farmland to Missouri woodlands – more trees, occasional rocky bluffs, rolling hills.  We do live in a pretty state, and we’re coming up on the loveliest time of year here, which those Northwest states can’t rival.  We’ll enjoy the foliage of the woods in back of us  many mornings and afternoons and evenings from our deck.      

SUNDAY, SEPT 28

SUNDAY, SEPT 28:

     Drove nearly 12 hours today, a little less than 550 miles.  Started out really cool and foggy, and very, very windy.  Bill had to stop a couple of times and secure the kayaks.  He finally ended up turning them right-side up so that the wind wouldn’t catch them underneath.  Now, it just better not rain!!

     Stopped for our last night in a little town about 40 miles south of Sioux City IA.   A very nice family-run place.  Called On-Yur-Way.     They realize that Iowa doesn’t have a lot of allure for travelers, but their marketing strategy is to lure those of us who are “on our way” to/from  Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, or Alaska.  They knew exactly how many miles it was to St. Louis – they’ve been asked and looked it up several times!

     We’re definitely back in the Mid-west.  Heavily warm and humid as we stepped out of the truck at 7:00 – didn’t we just travel 11,000 miles to get AWAY from that??  But the sound of the crickets or katydids was welcome . . . very surprising, this late in the season.  But then so is the 85 degrees predicted for St. Louis tomorrow!

     Seems almost surreal to go to sleep tonight knowing that it will be our last in our cozy home on wheels for a while.  We’ve been used to the rhythms of being travelers and tourists for 14+ weeks . . . now we’ll transition to other rhythms.  We’ve done this transition twice before (with long trips), and it seems with ease.  But I always have a little hesitation and anxiety as I anticipate the change, wondering how long it will take us to adjust.  I shouldn’t be concerned.

     Once again, we are enormously grateful for the tremendous opportunity we had this summer to see so much of our country.  We never cease to be amazed at the diversity of magnificent beauty we have here in North America . ..  just on this trip, we got to experience such an abundance . . . glaciers, impossibly clear lakes, majestic mountains, man’s artistry in everything from gardens to city architecture.  And to get to walk in the steps of so much history was thrilling . . . in some ways, this trip could be dubbed  “Retracing Lewis & Clark’s Journey.”  And we got to meet so many of the nicest, friendliest people we’d ever hope to meet anywhere.  For anyone who’s becoming cynical and jaded about people’s generosity of spirit, they ought to venture out and travel across our land.  And not in first-class hotels!  And of course, getting to spend time with family – immediate and extended – was a treasure.

      Struck by all that we got to experience this summer, I’m reminded of the Scripture which declares that it’s “the living God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.”  And not only this trip (as well as our previous ones). We’re both often struck with awe and overwhelming gratitude for these retirement years we’re able to spend together.  A few years ago, neither of us could have foreseen nor imagined that we’d be given the means to retire when we did, and then to be able to indulge our passion for travel.  To use one of Bill’s favorite phrases, it’s almost an “embarrassment of riches.”  Thank you, Gracious Heavenly Father. 

               

 

SATURDAY, SEPT 27

SATURDAY, SEPT 27:

     Rained hard most of last night, and still this morning. Very windy too.  So we didn’t get a very early start – too wet and messy for Bill to get hitched up, etc. 

     When we did leave, had our last views of Montana mountains, enshrouded as they were in mountain storm clouds.  Very bittersweet for us – an ending of this trip, a reminder that we’re almost safely home, after over 14 weeks.
                                                    

 

     Transitioned into High Plains as we journeyed east.  Drove about 435 miles today, to Sundance WY.  A fairly easy drive - a few grades, but none very bad.    Stopped fairly early and broiled a last steak we’d picked up a few days ago. 

    I finished the most extraordinary, stunning book tonight:  The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.  Takes place in a post-apocalyptic America, in which nature and civilization both are utterly annihilated,  bleak and grotesque, with no hope remaining.  But a father and son journey through it sustained only by each other’s love.  One of the most raw emotional and moving books I’ve ever read.  The language and cadence of the sentences are absolutely poetic.  I haven’t read anything else of his, but must now.   

     Hope to get an earlier start tomorrow.  We’ve very anxious to get home now!

  
 

 

   

 


                                                                  

                                                                           

FRIDAY, SEPT 26

FRIDAY, SEPT 26:

     What a beautiful morning!  And a leisurely morning to enjoy it! 
                                                                          

Took our time and enjoyed breakfast outside in the mountain sunshine.  This really is a lovely RV park – surrounded by beautiful views of mountains.  In fact, Bozeman itself is a beautiful town, surrounded by beautiful country!   If we were to live in Montana, Bozeman certainly would seem a prime spot.

      After we cleaned up, we drove around 25 miles west of town to Missouri River Headwaters State Park.  This is exactly what its name indicates – a state park built around the site of where the Missouri River begins.  It’s actually at the confluence of 3 smaller rivers.  Lewis & Clark arrived here in July 1805 and determined this to be the headwaters of the mighty river they had been travelling upstream for so long.  They named the three tributary rivers the Jefferson, the Madison, and the Gallatin, after the 3 men in Washington DC who promoted the expedition.

                                                              

                                                     

 

It was here that they realized the urgency of obtaining horses for the trek over the mountains, as it was obvious that they could no longer use the river route.  Soon after they left here,  they met up with the Shoshones, who did in fact provide them with the needed horses, and also where Sacagewea was reunited with her brother.

     I hope that while they were camped here Lewis& Clark took in the beauty of this place!

                                                                                

        

      So in a sense we’ve truly come full circle on this trip.  Saw so much of Lewis & Clark’s journey in Washington & Oregon, as they triumphantly reached their destination, and now being at this spot here in Montana where they’d explored and camped months earlier, not yet knowing the end of their historic story.  And of course, in St. Charles, as we bike the Katy Trail, we frequently see where they began.

     It seems a very appropriate “last stop” on our trip, only sort of in reverse.  As L & C began a new phase of their journey, going westward, we’re also heading toward a new phase . . . called home.  J   Our 14+ week adventure is coming to an end.  We have 2-3 days of hard driving ahead of us, but then will transition from the travelers’/adventurers’/explorers’ life on the road to life at home.  We’re ready!    

     After an afternoon of relaxing around the RV, we met my 2^nd cousin Leslie for dinner in town at Applebee’s.  She’s recently moved here from Pasadena to join her eldest son, DJ, who’s attending Montana State Univ here.   We had a great time catching up on the excitement of her new job and reliving some family history.  Her father (my cousin) is the custodian of much of our maternal family history, and Leslie will continue that, thankfully.
                                                                              

     

 

 

THURSDAY, SEPT 25

THURSDAY, SEPT 25:

     Rained lightly most of the night.  We loved it!  And oddly enough, I didn’t even mind it yesterday afternoon & evening – in fact, I kind of welcomed it.  With the chilly temperatures, it just seemed as autumn’s official welcome, I guess.  We felt so cozy wrapped up in our warm clothes last night!

      Up early this morning, to get a (relatively, for us) early start.  A beautiful sunrise greeted us,


                                                                               

as well as 2 deer right outside our RV a little later.  
                                                            

We left at 8:30.

      Our plan was just to drive as far as we comfortably could, knowing that we didn’t need to be in Bozeman (almost 500 miles from Grand Coulee) til Friday.  That’s when we'd made arrangements to meet my cousin Larry’s daughter Leslie for dinner.  The drive was really scenic most of the way . . . alternating between high desert, with interesting buttes, and mountain pine and fir forest, depending on elevation.  It would be up and down through the passes . . . a couple were long and pretty hairy, and again, Bill was earnestly checking all the gauges.  We had to pull over a couple of times to let the engine cool off – the warning light had come on.  This picture tells the story (at least part of it)!
                                                                                

 

But gorgeous, absorbing Rocky Mountain scenery surrounded us during those mountain passes, especially after we were on the eastern side of Missoula.  Oh the western side, skies were pretty hazy – another forest fire??

     When the road followed a valley, we made really good time.  By the time we reached Butte, we realized that we only needed to go another 70 miles or so til Bozeman.  Then we could set up there for 2 nites and not have to move.  So we continued on, arriving at the campground just before dark, with an easy pull-thru site.  We didn’t get a good look at the RV park, but it looks very nice.  We’ll take a closer look tomorrow morning.  Both tired, but glad to be here!  We think that the Lord needs to start paying overtime to His angels in charge of engines and brakes!

     Very warm today – turned on the fan in the RV and changed into cooler clothes right away, even though evening.  Fixed a frozen PF Chang skillet dinner.  All we needed.

 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT 24

WEDNESDAY, SEPT 24: 

     Rained last night, and still a light rain this morning.  Slept in a little, and had a leisurely breakfast, as we only needed to drive about 100 miles today to get to Grand Coulee.  But it still took about 3 hours, as the grades and curves, although not nearly as bad as yesterday’s, still slowed us down to 25 or 30 mph at times.  Picturesque high desert scenery for a lot of the way; scenic in its own stark way.  Amongst the sagebrush, we’d see lots of splotches of black, and also what looked like black haystacks . . . similar to the seastacks we saw on the north Pacific.  We learned later that both were results of the volcanic lava rock here.

     Arrived in the town of Grand Coulee, and got set up in our RV park just outside of town.  The owner was very helpful and put is in an easy-in, easy-out site.  The moment you walk outside, you’re surrounded by the fragrance of sage – smells heavenly!

     Soon after we got here, we unhitched and drove a couple of miles into town and beyond to the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center.  They had their last tour of the day at 4:00, which we wanted to make.  Another great tour!  Took us to the 3^rd powerhouse and on top of the spillway itself.  We were both so impressed with what we learned here about this dam, things which we’d  no idea about. The stats are amazing:  It was the largest concrete structure in the world at the time it was built (begun in 1933, ended in 1941) . . . 12 million cubic yards of concrete, which would build a highway from Seattle to Miami  (it’s still #2 in the world, surpassed by a dam in China as the largest).  550 feet tall, nearly as thick, almost a mile long.  It’s the largest single producer of power in North America (power of any kind – coal, nuclear, electric), generating more than 21 billion kw of electricity each year.  It provides electricity for 11 western states.  In fact, the 3^rd powerhouse by itself can provide all the electric power that both Seattle and Portland need.  (This third powerhouse was added in the 1960’s, when the booming post-war years saw the need for even more electric power. As the plans were being laid, the USSR had unveiled their newest dam which produced more power than any other in the world; not to be surpassed by those Dirty Commies, the Grand Coulee engineers were directed to keep upping the wattage that this new powerhouse would be able to produce.  So they did – at that time the highest in the world.)  The Grand Coulee is the largest dam of the 14 which are on the Columbia & Snake Rivers, providing power to the entire northwest region and beyond . . . the Bonneville Dam which I toured back in Portland is another in this matrix.

     This was another WPA project during the New Deal.  It had been conceptualized many years earlier, but never brought to fruition until FDR & Congress allocated WPA funds for it during the depression.  At one point the project employed 10,000 workers.  We heard repeatedly that today we don’t have any idea as to how devastating that depression was and what a shot in the arm projects like this were to thousands of skilled laborers who were unemployed.  And the dam’s ability to produce confidence wasn’t just limited to the workers it employed, but to the nation as a whole.  It was a sign and symbol that America could still imagine and produce tremendous things, at a time when the general population wondered where the nation was headed.  As the Woody Guthrie ballad said, “It’s just about the biggest thing that man has ever done.” 

                                                                           


                                                            3rd Powerhouse:      

                                             Generators in 3rd Powerhouse:                                                          

                                               Crane used to move hundreds of tons of equip:

 

                                                 Storage of emergency door, weighing hundreds of tons:

                                               Pipes used to carry water to irrigation lake, pumped up by powerhouses:

 

 

 

Looking down at spillway: 

 

Lake Roosevelt behind the dam: 

  

 

   Ironically, it wasn’t electric power which was the original impetus behind the idea of a dam here in this part of Washington.  It was for irrigation purposes for the entire Columbia basin, 1 million acres which received less than 10 inches of rain a year, rendering most attempts at producing viable crops a failure; it was considered a vast wasteland.  But as soon as the dam and first powerhouse came on line in 1941, we were at war, and the dream of irrigation gave way as a priority to producing energy for the ship and aircraft building industries in the northwest.  It wasn’t until 1951 that the pumps to provide irrigation were completed and first used.  They transformed the entire arid central region of Washington to an agricultural mecca.  Now we get an abundance of fruit (cherries, apples) and other products (Coors has thousands of acres of hops) from this area.  Including the grapes that we learned about a couple of days ago.  Love it when everything ties together! J

     On our way back to the RV for dinner, we made a slight detour to a viewing point where you can see the entire dam in context.  Even though not a clear day (an anomaly here in the high desert), the view was still pretty impressive. 
                                                              

     Finished our spaghetti leftovers, changed into warmer clothes, and headed back down to the Visitors Center for a film at 7:30 and laser light show at 8:30.  The film was only one of several which the Visitors Center shows . . . this one was on the actual building of the dam – an engineering and construction marvel - and its impact on the region both back then and now.  Then we went back outside to watch the laser show.  As we walked across the parking lot, even though pitch black, the sound of the water rushing over the spillway was tremendous.  We hadn’t seen or heard it before . . . right now, they don’t have a need to let any water out, but our tour guide said that they do it at night just before the laser show for the effect.     They have a small amphitheater where you can sit to view the show, but it was still spitting rain, so we watched from the comfort of the truck, with the windows rolled down so that we could hear the accompanying narrative and music.  The lasers are projected onto the spillway of the dam . . . was another version of the history of the area and story of the dam.  Very artful and creative!
                                                               

             

      Yet another example of how our National Park Service (although, technically, Grand Coulee Dam is under the auspices of the Bureau of Reclamation, but still part of the Dept of Interior) goes above and beyond to enhance our enjoyment and appreciation of our country’s rich landmarks.  Both the laser show and tour were absolutely free.  Beyond the cost factor, we were very impressed and grateful that they even provide access to the dam at all, given the security risks.  We all had to pass through a security clearance similar to airports before the tour, and an armed guard accompanied us.  Of course that costs money!  But we two taxpayers are very grateful that they’re using some of our $$ for that purpose . . . to grant access to ordinary citizens who simply  want to experience, enjoy, and learn more about our national treasures.

 

    

 

 

 

                                                     

 

TUESDAY, SEPT 23

TUESDAY, SEPT 23:

     Left around 9:30 this morning and drove north on I-5 til the junction of Hwy 20, heading east.  This took us through North Cascades National Park.  We stopped at a Visitors Center right off the highway.  Was a lovely, spacious building without frills, which kind of echoes the nature of this National Park.  It’s largely wilderness . . . no lodging, other than campgrounds, no restaurants, only one road, no crowds.

                                                           

     The exhibits in the Visitors Center focused  on the 7 or 8 different eco-zones found in the Park, depending on elevation, rainfall, latitude, & other factors.  So, as we drove through the Park from west to east and ascended in elevation, we experienced a moisture-loving Douglas Fir/red cedar/western  hemlock forest,  lovely subalpine meadows (showy with wildflowers in the summertime, now given over to splashes of fall colors) surrounded by large stands of lacey Hemlocks, and then a second temperate forest of Ponderosa and Lodgepole pines and spruce trees as we descended again on the considerably drier eastern slope. Scenes of alpine ecosystems, where the major features are rock, snow, and ice, can only be seen in the distance from the road, or from a strenuous hike.   

     We made a couple of stops at overlooks.  However, the day was cloudy, and it even started to rain lightly, so we only had glimpses of this mountain wilderness, which is considered by some to be the most beautiful in the U.S., with its high jagged peaks, abundant glaciers, sheer-walled cliffs, spires, and ridges, glacier-fed turquoise lakes, and cascading waterfalls.  Glad we were privileged to have a taste of this pristine Park.

                                                                     

                                                            

 

     Even if the weather had been better, I’m not sure that we would have spent much more time here, as the climb was hard on the engine, and coming down the east slope was a killer on the brakes. When we pulled over to stop, smoke poured from them.  Bill was really stressed and concerned, and said that it was better for us to keep going and let the cool temperature and rain help cool the brakes.  Between my fear of heights and brake issues with the truck pulling the RV, our next trip might be to Kansas!

     A few miles later, at 5:00, we were in the quaint Western town of Winthrop, where we stayed for the night.  This little town promotes its western pioneer & mining heritage with wooden sidewalks, an old-style saloon (actually the oldest legal saloon in the state),  re-enactments of Old West shoot-outs, etc.  But for us, all we wanted was a place to spend a restorative evening & night.  The RV park we found offered just that!  Called the Pine Near (it took me a long time to figure out that it’s a corny pun for “Pioneer”, it’s a real gem - all grass, including the sites, set  against the high desert bluffs.  And fantastic WiFi - almost as fast as home!

                                                                 

  

      Made spaghetti for dinner, and went to bed pretty early. We only drove about 150 miles today, but it was enough!

     We’ve made a full transition to fall now.  The air is definitely chilled & crisp, fall colors, though subtle here, are dominant now, and it’s pitch black by 7:30.  What a change from 3 months ago!