Mountain Girl

Where the West Meets the Northwest

I am back from another week on the road and feeling a bit relieved that I finally have some work lined up for the next several days...lest I be tempted to take off again. A girl sort of gets used to expecting a new adventure every day, not to mention taking all her meals at roadside stops like Flo’s Cafe in Grand Coulee, Washington, where the food is fantastic and the motto is “Ten thousand flies can’t be wrong.”

Pat and I drove for two days en route to Lake Chelan, where we spent a sleepy week at a lakeside resort, courtesy of my very generous auntie. This area of Washington is supposedly home to the world’s best tasting apples, and after sampling a couple from the business center in Manson, I couldn’t disagree: firm, juicy, good texture, and extraordinary flavor. From now on, it’s Chelan apples or nothing for me.

I remembered to bring my great grandparents’ book with me this time so I could explore some of the places they lived while they “gyppo’d” around that state. One of the first things we did was hike through a region close to Joe Creek, where my great grandfather and grandfather logged in the 1930s. I guess I thought walking where they once tread in their calks (pronounced “corks") would somehow slow down time, but its effect was exactly the opposite. Their lives were filled with both family and adventure, and yet how quickly they were over. You can’t waste one minute....

The following day we drove out to Grand Coulee Dam, mostly because Pat wanted to go. I was caught off guard, though, by how much the first sight of the behemoth moved me. Unlike Hoover Dam, which uses a visually striking concrete arch along with gravity to hold the Colorado back, Grand Coulee works simply because it’s so damn enormous. I know it destroyed fisheries and the Colville Indian Tribes’ way of life, submerged entire towns, and cost dozens of men their lives, but there is beauty in the testament it provides to the awesome human effort, cooperation, and ingenuity its construction required. I believe in the free market as much as the next gal, but it doesn’t seem possible that we could ever build something on the scale of Grand Coulee in this country again. I hope that doesn’t make me a communist.

A couple days before we left to come home, we took a ferry, Lady of the Lake II, from Chelan to Stehekin, which is only accessible by plane or boat. It took about four hours to get there, but the pleasant weather made for a smooth ride. I sat outside reading for most of the trip and consequently ended up with a red neck (for reals) and one red leg. Once we arrived at our destination, most of us got on an old school bus driven by a friendly but fast-talking preacher who drove us to Rainbow Falls and rapidly relayed some highlights about the community along the way (like the best place to pick blackberries, who fills in for the postmaster when she wants to take a break, and the place where he got his Plymouth Horizon stuck in high water one year when it flooded). I loved his style, but Pat was made nervous by the fact that all the while the preacher’s left hand was busy holding a mic, the right one frequently retreated from the steering wheel to wave energetically at passing cars on the narrow road skirting the roaring Stehekin River, which also just happened to be at flood stage. That Pat. What a nut.

Well, it appears I have run out of time to write, but tomorrow I will tell you how we spent a $100 on meat and cookies in Cle Elum, Washington, were nearly killed(!) in a freak hail storm in north central Oregon, missed out on mountain oysters in Bend, but eventually feasted on homemade ravioli before returning home.

Posted by Kristin on 05/21/06 at 08:55 AM
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