It's been an absolutely gorgeous day today. I think it's the first truly nice day so far. It was in the high 60's in Spokane, cooler in the mountains. I'm really glad I changed my plans. It's beautiful here, and I would have missed this section of the state (Coulee Dam area) if I stuck to the bike. The change was amazing. I headed south on route 21 out of Republic, still in the mountains. I cut west across an un-numbered road, and all of a sudden I dropped out of the mountains into the high desert. Grand Coulee Dam is very impressive. It was fascinating to see it from the distance, then to be right there. There is a road across the top of the dam, which allows you to get a different view / perspective. It's interesting looking down the face of the dam!
I got into town too late to tour the dam today, so I will head back there in the morning. I'll probably do the tour, then spend the rest of the day biking. I only paid for one night in the campground, but I'm leaning toward staying tomorrow night and then heading out Wednesday morning. I ended up at Spring Canyon campground in the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation area. For information on the recreation area, look at http://www.nps.gov/laro/. No showers, but it is a beautiful site. One of the folks at the site next to me said that one of the private campgrounds down the road has public showers, so I can get a shower there tomorrow. She also warned me about one very odd thing in this campground - a sprinkler system! Luckily she stopped me from putting my tent on the grass. It's set up in a shady spot. I just hope it's far enough from the sprinkler head to prevent me from getting soaked!
There is a laser light show on the spillway of the dam every night at 10. It was highly recommended to me - so I guess tonight won't be my usual early night in the tent.
The weather today was perfect, but there was a major rainstorm up here yesterday. From the forecast I saw before I left Spokane, it sounds like tomorrow will be a good day and Wednesday will be rainy again. We'll see.
The laser light show was worth the late night. They opened the spillway just enough to produce a white background - just two to four inches of water. The sound of the water was amazing, and that wasn't a lot of water! They used the lasers and narration (the narrator was supposed to be the Columbia River) to tell the story of the river and the dam. Very interesting.
