Today was our scheduled departure date from the gorgeous area around Newport, WA, and the Pend Oreille Valley. We got out of bed at 7:30 which is quite early for us. All our stuff was returned to the designated storage places, we disconnected from the utilities, stopped by the dump station to empty the holding tanks and were soon on our way.
After a little cruising along on back roads, we intersected US-2 and tried to go west. Unfortunately, the road went south into Spokane where we passed through about 10 miles of traffic signals before we turned west on I-90. Only 3 miles later, we were able to exit the freeway onto US-2 again.
US-2 in this section of Washington passes through quite an expanse of wheat fields, massive lava outcroppings and some tiny towns where they make the vehicles slow down to 30 mph in order to see all the attractions the towns offer. We did not spot any attractions. We eventually arrived in a little burg called Wilbur where we turned northwest on WA-174 to Grand Coulee. As we descended from the wheat and lava fields toward the Columbia River and the giant Grand Coulee Dam, the river and massive engineering project came into view. The land is all wheat-colored and the river is a gorgeous blue. The dam is massive. At one time it was the largest dam in the world. Three Gorges in China now holds the title.
We pulled into the town of Grand Coulee and hooked a left onto WA-155 to Electric City where we turned into the Coulee Playground Resort. It is actually a regular RV park with scant resort-like properties other than it is right on the river and they have a spiffy boat ramp. There are full hookups, intermittent wi-fi and a beautiful view of the river from our Barbarian Invader. Even though we got a back-in site, access was easy with large RV spots except the sites right on the water which are crowded. There are many boats here and large numbers of folks seem to be having a great time water skiing, jetskiing and fishing. These people must make many pulls into this place from their homes because there are many spots with both a camp trailer or fifth wheel and a boat. Pulling both at the same time would be problematic. We will go exploring tomorrow.
Peggy got a few pictures from the shotgun side as we passed through Spokane and the tiny towns and you can see them by clicking here