We started out the day with no agenda so it is fortunate that our daughter, Dana, and her boyfriend, Devon, were nice enough to come visit us at our RV spot in the Leavenworth Thousand Trails. We were saved from any substantial driving for almost the whole day.
We had plenty of time during the morning to tough it out with a leisurely breakfast, showers and some wonderfully unproductive bird and squirrel watching. Dana and Devon showed up in the early afternoon and we spent some time hobnobbing and drinking before deciding on a trip over to nearby Lake Wenatchee.
Peggy and I went to Lake Wenatchee with her nephew, Ian, back in April. At that time there was ample snow on the surrounding mountains, a placid lake surface with little wind and almost no people in the area. Since there was no waiting for anything, we even purchased a Washington State Parks yearly pass for $30.
It was a bit different this time. When all of us arrived today, the campgrounds are quite full, the beach was packed with seemingly happy but almost alabaster colored Washingtonians, the wind was blowing about 20 knots, many boats rocked upon the lake surface and there was no snow in sight. It was still beautiful despite the crowds. I noted they let dogs onto the beach and all of them seemed delighted to be there.
We returned to our trailer for dinner and we had some nice steaks. It was a good day today. I feel great about not getting anything productive accomplished.
There are a couple pictures of our important issue if you click here

One of the mundane tasks required of full-time RV travel is shopping in strange communities. While Peggy loves all aspects of shopping except check-out, I loathe all forms of shopping and consider it just above root canal work and proctometer probes on my list of least favorite things to do. Today was a shopping day.
We drove about 30 miles into Wenatchee to start our fun. Our first stop was at Les Schwab Tires to check prices on replacement tires for our daughter’s Subaru Outback. The best they could do for four steel-belted radials of the appropriate size was $620. We continued on to Costco where we found they had Bridgestones on sale for around $450. We went into the main Costco store to shop and cogitate on the tire cost. After less than $200 (a record), we stopped by the store food facility and decided to purchase the Costco tires while eating our Polish dogs.
It looks like Dana will soon be sporting new radials on her Subaru as soon as Costco has the tires in stock. From Costco we went to a Jiffy Lube to get Charlotte’s oil changed. I normally have this work done on Charlotte’s diesel engine by Ford but the tiny Wenatchee dealership, Town Ford, indicated they will not be able to schedule our oil change until after we have left town. I am at a loss to figure out how a Ford dealership in a small town could be so busy that customers need to wait two weeks for an oil change, a process easily accomplished in 20 minutes. The guys at Jiffy Lube hopped right on our vehicle and about 15 minutes after driving in we were driving out with new filters and four gallons of new oil in the crankcase. It was also about $50 cheaper than having Ford make us wait before changing our oil.
Now we were perplexed since we had little other stuff we needed to do so we unanimously chose to go to the nearby Badger Mountain Brewing, our daughter’s place of work and all-around great air-conditioned venue. Dana happened to be there and introduced us to her co-workers and John, the brewmaster. After a few really tasty porters, John generously offered us an opportunity to take a tour of the brewery which is behind the tap room.
John must have a penchant for gorgeous stainless steel hardware because the brewing gear is just magnificent but quite complex. Shiny tanks joined with sparkling piping and coupling hardware are truly impressive. The best part of this, from my standpoint at least, is this beautiful hardware makes for very tasty porter. They have several fermenting tanks here and they are putting them to good use.
Badger Mountain is a relatively new operation and John, being one talented with the processes of making plain old sugar into great, tasty alcohol, has acquired the most impressive still I have ever seen. Not only is the engineering elegant, the combination of stainless steel and bright copper components is spectacular. His gear looks like something I would love to have in my garage not necessarily to use it but to instead just to have my buddies come by and admire the setup.
I don’t believe Badger Mountain has a distillery license due to the bizarre and arcane Washington state regulations regarding alcohol manufacture but I can state that they do have the correct gear for the work. They cannot sell commercial booze products yet but the regulations do not forbid a little non-sales fooling around with grain alcohol and John seems to know how the gear works. Guys like this make life interesting. While almost anybody can make bread from grain, only the truly sharp can use grain to make tasty beverages and John seems to be one of those blessed with this talent.
You can see a picture of the still and the operator if you click here

We were quite lazy this morning, awaking late and having a nice breakfast and leisurely showers. We had not really formulated any plans for today and we stuck to the agenda. Naps were taken. Reading was done. Loafing was king.
Our daughter, Dana, got off work at about 5:30 PM and we decided to take her to dinner in nearby Cashmere, WA. There is a brew house there called Milepost 111 where we have dined and had drinks before so we chose to meet her there.
Milepost 111 has not less than 24 types of draught beer available and the food is pretty good. I had clam strips and shrimp with truffle fries and they were more than satisfactory. Service was good. Some words of warning to any readers: the flights of assorted beers, stouts and ales here are much more expensive than just an ordinary draught so choose what you want and don’t go exploring. The desserts are also pricey so, if you are inclined to get a dessert, go someplace else. Also, from past experience I found the barbecue sauce here is quite tasty but if it does not list sauce on your selected menu item, the schmucks charge six bits for little bitty tubs of the stuff without telling anybody. You will discover this when you get the check.
There are a couple pix of today’s important stuff to see if you click here

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

As usual, I had preconceived notions about what the countryside up the north side of the Columbia River above Grand Coulee Dam looks like so I had grim expectations of a drive through that country. In accordance with what typically occurs in this situation, I was completely wrong. I expected nothing but rolling hills with wheat covering them. There was a little bit of that but the rest was gorgeous.
We started out the day doing the laundry but, due to Peggy’s efficiency with this onerous task, we were soon done and had the bulk of the afternoon for exploring. We initially headed back southeast toward the bucolic Wilbur but we turned off before we got there only missing our concealed turn once before we got on the correct road east. After just a few miles we turned north on WA-21.
We were in wheat fields with an elevation around 2500′ for a bit but soon the road dove into a canyon and down to around 1500′ where we found the Keller Ferry. The ferry is operated by the state and is free. It takes about 10 minutes from the time you get on the ferry until you drive off on the other side of Lake Roosevelt which is what they call the Columbia River above Grand Coulee Dam. There is a very steep hill pulling up and away from the ferry. Right after the hill, the road turns away from the Columbia and skirts the Sanpoli River which I had never heard of before today. Bluffs, lakes, rivers, forests, pastures, mountains and prairies can all be found along this road and the really great part is they are all only about 5 minutes from each other. There was one strange bit along this road. For about 3 or 4 miles we crossed through what looked like a migration of grasshoppers or locusts or death bugs ambling across the road and away from the river. There were some big specimens in the group and they made little popping noises as we drove over the dozens we squished.
We continued up WA-21 until we came to Cache Creek Road. There we turned west and crossed a little 3200′ pass before descending into Nespelem. Again, this road is a great one for scenery although it does have some extended climbs and descents. Some corners have speed limits of 20 mph or slower. We successfully navigated the curves and soon arrived in Nespelem.
Nespelem is an ordinary tiny town and we did not spot anything interesting there so we turned south on WA-155 back toward Grand Coulee Dam. More spectacular scenery was lining the road as 155 passes down the east side of the Columbia River below the dam. We crossed the Columbia near Elmer City, climbed the grade alongside the dam and drove into the town of Grand Coulee where we stopped for diesel.
We were just about to leave the gas station and head back to our Invader a few miles south in Electric City when a little hobbit of a woman came up to my passenger window to offer us help despite us never requesting any. She seemed perplexed that we did not need any help but that didn’t shake her belief that she should explain to us that she has trouble remembering the names of the local municipalities, she has many interestes and lives nearby. Many subjects continued to be elaborated upon while I was desperately giving hand signs to Peggy to start the truck and leave. After a while, Peggy finally had heard enough disjointed bits of data and started our diesel motor, put it in Drive and got us away from the fountain of information. It was a narrow escape.
We took a few pictures along the way and you can see them if you click here

Last night the wind came up around dark and took care of all the loose small items in the campground. All the surfaces in Coulee Playland Resort were very clean this morning.
This morning Peggy was the early riser rolling out of bed just after 6:00 AM. This was strange behavior because, in our dotage, we have sort of agreed on no early-morning shenanigans prior to 7:30. It was a beautiful morning and a little early rising was worth it. We were free to explore for the day so we hopped into Charlotte for a spin around the Grand Coulee area.
Our first destination was the Grand Coulee Dam. It is a monster that is certainly larger than any I have seen before. Many thick conductors lead away from the dam’s powerhouses. Trapped behind the dam is Lake Roosevelt which is really the backed-up Spokane and Columbia Rivers and Banks Lake which extends for about 30 miles to Coulee City.
We drove over a bridge north of the dam, crossing what is now solely the Columbia River. We turned north down the river on WA-155 towards the tiny town of Belvidere on a road that climbs the giant palisade walls of the gorge. The terrain here is extremely rugged. Even on foot, you could only move back and forth along the edge of the river. The walls of the gorge are giant palisades of columnar basalt and about the only way up, other than the road, is with ropes, pitons and lots of other pricey climbing gear.
When we got to Belvidere we turned around and headed back towards the dam taking a short side trip through a slightly less tiny town of Elmer City. It was a nice little sliver of land between the highway and the Columbia and looks to be one of the very few places to build within this corridor. The Columbia is just released from the dam only a few miles upstream and the current is open for business here.
We crossed back over the river, passed by our RV park in Electric City and headed south along the east edge of the enormous Banks Lake. More gigantic palisades of basalt line the shores of the lake almost all the way to Coulee City at the south end of the lake. This extremely rugged country is also very beautiful with the enormous rock cliffs bordering the deep blue lake. We took advantage of the many turnouts along WA-155 where you can pull out and admire the great scenery.
At the south end of Banks Lake we joined up with US-2 for a short drive to a place called Dry Falls. There is a beautiful example of what an enormous waterfall would look like without the water. Near the end of the Ice Age, the Columbia Basin was blocked by two enormous glacial lakes, one backing water up all the way to Montana. Things got warmer and when the ice dams broke, a water volume equal to 10 times the flow of all the current rivers in the world came crashing through here and got pitched off the 400 hundred foot high cliffs. This flow also dug out some pretty big divots in the river bottom below the falls in a series of plunge pools. It must have been extremely violent. The evidence of scouring action can be seen all the way along Banks Lake, the path taken by some of the really big floods.
On the way back from Dry Falls, we pulled out at Steamboat Rock State Park. We bought a Washington state parks year-long pass earlier this year at Lake Wenatchee. We got to use it today and avoided the $10 entry fee. The park appears to be very nice with RV camp spots with full hookups, a small store, cabins and beautiful scenery of Banks Lake and the looming Steamboat Rock.
We continued a bit further north on 155 and soon turned off to visit a spot called Northrup Cove. A quarter mile or so down the access road and we came to a small lagoon. When we stopped to take a picture of the lagoon, I stupidly rolled down my passenger window and stuck the camera out the hole just as I noticed swarms of mosquitoes urgently flying in all the openings. I quickly tripped the shutter and we started slowly moving while pointlessly flailing at the almost-transparent flying vermin. After about 5 miles with the windows alternately open and closed in attempts to have the tiny bastards sucked out through the miracle of aerodynamics, we suspected we were flying pest-free and started to relax.
We headed back to our RV spot in Electric City and had some late lunch before napping. Retirement sure is a great environment for napping. I love this stuff.
We shot a few pictures at the dam and as we passed through this amazing country. You can see some of them by clicking here

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

Today we were very lazy and did almost nothing other than watch movies. We did drive as far as Old Town, which is on the east side of the Pend Oreille River, to get diesel for the drive tomorrow.
We did note a strange geographic anomaly today. Old Town, Idaho, is located mostly on the east side of the Pend Oreille River and if you drive west over the river from there you will see a sign on the bridge welcoming you to Washington. The sign lies. Old Town actually extends about 2 blocks on the west side of the river and after you cross State Street, THEN you are in Washington. Obviously some comedian schemed to confuse normal people by not having a river separate two states. Weird.

My fatwa for Peggy to drive down the west side of the Pend Oreille River the other day was probably not the direction as navigator that I should have given. Today we got on US-2 to Newport, across the river into Idaho and immediately north on what was initially LeClerc Road which follows the east bank of the river. It was a better decision today.
This road runs basically parallel with WA-20 which is on the west side of the river. Our trip up 20 a few days ago was very nice but the really good stuff started north of Ione. Today our trip up LeClerc Road gave us a completely different view of the Pend Oreille River and it was great. LeClerc runs very close to the river in many spots and passes through mixed conifer/hardwood forests and some very pretty farm country.
About 25 miles down the east shore we came across a state exhibit of something called Manresa Grotto. We pulled over, parked and bailed out of the truck for a hike up a dirt path to a wossname. The Grotto turned out to be three sizable caves, the middle one the shallowest. The cave to the right was pretty fair sized – maybe about the size of a hotel room. The cave on the left had two entrances and is about the volume of a two bedroom house. It also had a spectacular view of the Pend Oreille River running through the emerald bottom land.
The caves are worth the short walk but, unfortunately, many inconsiderate jerks have been nice enough to augment the natural beauty with carved and painted graffiti throughout the cave surfaces. Some guy probably sporting a bright white scalp and many amateurish tattoos has provided a nice black swastika painted on the column between caves. I believe the caves were initially used by Native Americans mostly because the Grotto is on the Kalispell Indian Community lands.
We continued north from the Grotto through beautiful country. Peg spotted some wild turkeys and we spotted some waterfowl but we saw no bigger game on the road going north. There are many ordinary houses that have been embellished by the residents and the results are great. No two houses are the same. There are a few places along the road where the resident is the type of person who likes to keep everything he has ever owned and displays them for neighbors and passersby to appreciate. These guys seem to exist nationwide. The gorgeous scenery all along the rest of the road makes up for the few hideous junkyards.
At Ione we turned around by crossing the Pend Oreille and turning south on WA-20 until we got to Usk. Usk really is more an intersection than a town and we crossed back over the river toward Idaho and backtracked south on LeClerc Road until we came to US-2. After some poor navigation by today’s navigator (his name rhymes with head), we were able to find our way to ID-41 south to a place I think was called Tweetie. We turned west and back out of Idaho and into Washington for about the third time today. We sort of took a northwest direction from there on paved roads, except in the long sections with washboard gravel surfacing, on our way back to Diamond Lake and the Little Diamond Campground which is not on Diamond Lake. We had completed our loop for today and were almost home when a fawn tried to commit suicide by smashing into our radiator while we were moving along at about 50. Eagle-eyed Peggy spotted the almost doomed creature in time to apply the brakes. The guy tailgating us had a more difficult time and followed afterwards at a much greater distance.
It was a great tour today. I would suggest to all interested that the scenery on the east bank of the Pend Oreille is better than that on the west side in the area around Newport and points north. The area around Lake Sullivan is beautiful and the road there starts at the end of LeClerc Road in Ione.
We took a couple pictures during today’s wonderful drive and you can see a few of them by clicking here

I am sorry to write that we did not do anything very interesting today. We started out the day with some fortified coffee before Peggy jumped behind the wheel of Charlotte and drove us about 35 miles into Spokane.
The part of Spokane we drove through was filled with tidy residences of regular old middle-income Americans and quite nice. The main drag that we drove down, Central Avenue, was a very busy road with an abundance of traffic signals timed such that movement of vehicles is very sluggish. To make a bad thing worse, some city crews were out to block some of the slow moving lanes so they didn’t move at all. It was about 90 degrees in Spokane so we were delighted that our dependable Ford F-250 has an ample air conditioning system and working power windows.
Spokane has both a Trader Joe’s store (our favorite place) and a Costco. After leaving the second food venue, we had many bags and coolers full of food and $500 less in our wallet. Once back at our beloved Invader, we were challenged to find adequate space to stockpile our loot but, in the end, we were successful provided we kill off a bit in a handle of Jack Daniel’s and drink a six pack or so of porter before we depart on Sunday. I believe we can do that.