Day 26 – Scenic Drive

Flathead Lake, MT

Today was mostly a driving day. We drove almost 400 miles, about half of that on 2-lane roads so it took a while. We entered back into Mountain Time and with all the stops we made, we didn’t get to the hotel until almost 8, which is a couple hours past what we normally try to do. Fortunately the drive went through some of the most varied and scenic roads we have seen so far - from forested mountains, to rolling grasslands with no one in sight, to fast flowing rivers, to mountain lakes, etc. For scenery, we liked Lake Coeur d’Alene in Idaho and the St. Regis river and Flathead Lake, both in Montana.

Grand Coulee Dam

We only made a couple of stops today, the first at the Grand Coulee Dam. This was a last minute addition to our itinerary but well worth it. The security on the tour seemed a little like overkill, but I suppose they know what they are doing. Grand Coulee Dam is the largest dam in the US and was built in the 30s and 40s, but had a significant addition in the 60s. One surprising thing we learned was that the hydroelectric power it generates is not the main purpose of the dam. They claim that the main purpose is really to provide irrigation to central Washington. The region it serves is high desert and gets less than 10 inches of rain a year, but the irrigation water allows them to grow a wide variety of crops. They specifically mentioned potatoes and mint as crops you might not think of as coming from Washington.

Jeanne in her "Little Red Wagon"

To continue in our “Americana” theme, we stopped in Spokane to see the world’s largest Little Red Wagon and the world’s largest milk bottle, which used to be part of a dairy but now is a restaurant.