Dam!

We ran into a few hiccups today: we couldn't do our floatplane ride to Stehekin at the head of Lake Chelan because they've closed down for the season. Shame, it would have been something to visit a place that you can't reach by road - and we would have enjoyed the flight along the 55 miles of the lake between spectacular cliffs. Ho hum. So then we beetled off to see the Grand Coulee Dam mainly because the name set off an ancient earworm Woody Guthrie song - and got there five minutes too late for the tour of the powerstation and a drive across the dam. Damn!

But the Visitor Centre was very interesting, if a bit sad about the salmon and the local Indian tribes - and kind of wry, the bit about how when they were building this massive thing (biggest concrete construction in the world! Biggest since the Pyramids! Weighs 22 million tonnes!) there were serious doubts that so much electricity would ever be needed. And the drive back along Lake Burns and across what I want to call prairie land was just lovely on a bright autumn day with the sun dropping into the golden zone.

And today's animal? Artistically rusty mountain goats. I like them - but I'm hanging out for a coyote now.