As Susan quoted today, you can't always get what you want, but you can get what you need! Our sites at this campground are sitting under the hot summer sun on hard gravel surrounded by high tension wires. Not very pretty, but we have water, sewer, 50 amps, internet and cell phone service. So we can't complain. Let's just hope we don't glow in the dark after leaving here!
We've been visited a couple of times by this bird. He really can make some noise. After some research on the internet, I've found it is a California Quail. The field he is overlooking is supposed to be filled with rattlesnakes. Thank goodness we did not see one of those!
We arrived here and took a long nap in order to be ready for the laser light show scheduled every night at Grand Coulee Dam. After a short tour of the Visitor's Center, we set up our chairs and watched a 35-minute laser light show on the spillway of the Dam. It was fully narrated with musical backgrounds. Quite interesting! I know you can't tell from the picture, but these lasers are aimed at the water "spilling" over the Dam from Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake. This "screen" is 300' tall and 1,400' wide! The spillway is open for the nightly laser light show. Other than in the spring to handle the mountain runoffs, the dam operators only spill water in the rare event that there's too much coming down the river to run through the generators for the amount of demand for electricity.
I could fill pages and pages about Grand Coulee Dam, but will save you and just leave you with these few facts: Grand Coulee Dam is the largest hydropower producer in the the US with a total generating capacity of 6,809 megawatts. (It's the 
4th largest in the world.) It is one of the largest concrete structures in the world, containing nearly 12 million cubic yards of concrete (yes, Mike, concrete...not cement). You could build a sidewalk four feet wide and four inches thick and wrap it twice around the equator (50,000 miles). It towers 550 feet above bedrock (as high as the Washington Monument); although only about 300 feet is above the water line of the Columbia River, and is 500 feet wide at the base and is just shy of a mile long.
4th largest in the world.) It is one of the largest concrete structures in the world, containing nearly 12 million cubic yards of concrete (yes, Mike, concrete...not cement). You could build a sidewalk four feet wide and four inches thick and wrap it twice around the equator (50,000 miles). It towers 550 feet above bedrock (as high as the Washington Monument); although only about 300 feet is above the water line of the Columbia River, and is 500 feet wide at the base and is just shy of a mile long.
The Grand Coulee Dam has three important functions irrigation, power production and flood control. Water supplied by Grand Coulee Dam irrigates more than 500,000 acres of farmland in the Columbia River Basin. Water from Lake Roosevelt is lifted 280 feet up a hillside to flow into the Banks Lake Reservoir and enters canals running to the Oregon border.
The construction costs for Grand Coulee Dam were approximately $300,000,000 and it has paid for itself 12 times over.
We had considered not taking this short detour to visit the dam, but we're now glad we did! Tomorrow we arrive in Arlington to see Joe, Kathy and Katie. We're very excited and can't wait to see them.
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