We reluctantly left the Northern Cascades and headed toward Leavenworth, a German-themed town just over Steven’s Pass. We headed down from the pass through the Tumwater Canyon. Our plan was to stop in Leavenworth for an hour or two then continue on to a county RV park just outside of Wenatchee. We have found the county parks we stayed in to be very nice and usually cheaper than the private campgrounds. Unfortunately, , we couldn’t find a place to park with the camper in Leavenworth and it looked a bit touristy, so we pressed on to Wenatchee River County Park. This park seems to cater to seniors. It was extremely clean and had numerous rules about age of your RV, putting mats on the lawn, and not allowing clotheslines It was tobacco free (a good thing).. Despite, all the rules, the sites were all drive-thru and it did have full hookups and a laundry and a good price so we were very happy. It was right on the Wenatchee River, just before it joined the Columbia. When we pulled into our site, we saw that our nuclear engineer friend, Mick and his wife were camping next to us.:)
Almost everywhere we camped on this trip was near railroad tracks. We were getting used to hearing trains pass by once or rwice a night. The tracks near Wenatchee were especially busy and, because they crossed street near our campground included a loud train whistle every time a train went by. In the morning we were able to get a look at the trains and their cargo and found train after train carrying airplane fuselages. After a quick search on Google, we found that theses are called ” pickle trains” due to the bright green protective anti-corrosion coating applied to the train bodies. The trains are manufactured in Wichita, Kansas and travel by rail to the Boeing assembly plant in Renton, Washington. It was really cool to see the planes on the train.
We left Wenatchee and decided to stay on Route 2 instead of getting on I 90. The backroads are much more interesting and frankly we don’t travel much faster than 55 mph anyway.
The terrain in eastern Washington is very different than the mountains and coast. It is very dry and very flat for miles and miles. We took a 30 minute detour to check out the Great Coulee Dam. It is quite impressive with a large (empty) Visitor Center. I guess touring dans is not popular anymore. The dam is the largest concrete dam in the US and was built to provide energy and irrigation. Unfortunately when they built it they did not include fish ladders because the dam is 550 feet tall and this blocked migratory salmon from accessing the Upper Columbia river for decades and this affected the indigenous populations in the area who relied on salmon. Fortuntaely there are several fish hacheries and salmon have been reintroduced into the upper Columbia River. We enjoyed the Visitor Center and learing about the history of the dam.
We drove thru Spokane and into Idaho. We planned to stay at an RV park in Wallace and ride a couple of bike trails over the next couple days before going to Glacier National Park
