Today was a travel day. We organized all our stuff, put it away in the Invader and pulled stakes at Coulee Playland Resort. We drove southwest on WA-155 through the Grand Coulee and past Dry Falls in Coulee City before joining US-2 again. Turning west on US-2, we passed over rolling hills of sage scrub for quite some time before being warned of an upcoming construction project ahead where we would be delayed by a flagperson-controlled one lane section. We were still moving along at about 60 mph before seeing the flagperson when we were passed by a dump truck going east. Right as he approached us, a chunk of rock bigger than a golf ball tumbled off his rear fender, bounced once in the road giving the particle some spin and flew up to punch a large crater into the driver’s side of our windshield. It is directly in front of my line-of-sight when driving. I believe I muttered something like “Golly!” or “Drat!” but really it was probably something a little more forceful and liberating. Regrettably, it could have been f___, sh__, go_____it or coc_____er smashed my window, the bas____!
We soon encountered the flagperson controlling the road and stopped for about 10 minutes. The work is progressing in a steep decline called Armour Draw where the road drops from about 2500′ to 1200′ elevation and it happens all within just a few miles. We were happy not to be going east because it is a steep climb.
Once we got to the bottom of the hill, we continued on until we hit the Columbia River near Chelan, WA. At the river, US-2 joins US-97 and turns south to Wenatchee. There we split from US-97 and continued on US-2 west up toward the Cascade Range. After about 30 miles, we turned north on WA-207 for about a 10 mile spin to the Thousand Trails Leavenworth Resort.
This is the second time we have been to this facility – we passed through here in April 2016 at the outset of our Great Basin tour we took this year. Very little has changed since we were here before other than it is not snowing and there are more campground loops open. Since we were in a new loop (for us), I crept about in the campground, circling like a fat shark, looking for a spot that had full hookups AND satellite TV reception. Much scrutiny was given to the options available for us before we decided and selected space number 58. Although the space has full hookups, it was well after we had set up our fifth wheel trailer before we found that my sense of direction was faulty and the satellite dish was unable to see the satellites necessary for TV reception due to the abundant pines in the campground. It appears we will be doing without TV for the next 9 days. This part of the world is quite pretty and I am quite sure we can get through without the TV for a while. It seems our only stuff to watch recently is Donald Trump putting his foot in his mouth so I believe we can get by for the duration.
We had not been set up for long when our daughter, Dana, who lives nearby, arrived in her new/used Subaru Outback. It is the first time we have seen her recent purchase and it was great to see our kid for the first time in four and a half months. Stupidly, I noted her recent purchase could probably benefit from tire replacement but Dana has a new job and may not be able to afford new radials at this point in her life. We may be able to solve this problem creatively.
There are pix of today’s highway fun which you can see if you click here