A Week Ago

Last week Ivy and Michael came to visit for the weekend. They had tickets to go on a guided rafting trip on the Wenatchee River on Saturday. The rafting turned out to be more of an adventure than they bargained for. Fortunately, between  Ivy keeping a cool head (even with her head trapped under the raft), Michael being highly motivated by a combination of love and fear to get her back in the raft, and perhaps some divine intervention, it ended out okay. For more details you can check out Ivy's blog.

 http://iviousmaximus.blogspot.com/

 On Friday we went to Grand Coulee. The tour of Grand Coulee Dam was interesting and non eventful, in a good way.  Rachel and I went with them and we had a nice day. I hadn't been to the dam for a long time and the access to it has really changed.  You used to be able to drive across the top of the dam and walk around inside of many areas on your own with only a few guides around in case you had questions.  There were also guided tours but you didn't have to take those tours. You could just look around on your own.  After 9/11 the dam was designated as a possible terrorist target and things are much more limited. Taking a tour is the only way you are allowed in the dam. You have two tour guides but you are also accompanied by an armed guard. You aren't allowed to take his picture or talk to him. He was very serious and intimidating. I barely dared look in his direction.  After the tour inside the dam, the guides drive you in vans so you can go on the road at the top of them dam and look down.  The officer with the gun on his belt and the other gun strapped to his thigh comes along for this as well. I didn't really mind the extra security and I understand it.  It was just different and I am always a little uneasy around guns.  

In addition to the Dam tour there is a Dam learning center/museum.  (There is also a bit of  immature fun in being able to say dam all the damn day) 

The "kids"

These are huge and have something to do with making electricity that I don't understand. At the same time they remind me of old monster movies, like Frankenstein. 

Everything at the dam is so big it is hard to keep things in perspective. The curved concrete things you can see to the right in the picture don't look like much from the top but look at the picture below.  See the big truck? That gives a better idea of their size. Each one has a river's worth of water rushing through it.  By the way, the technical name for" the curved concrete things" is penstocks. 

View from the top

Picture of a duck, because Rachel insisted.