Coulee Dam to Sandpoint
Before we left the motel, I popped out and took a few pictures of the local businesses. I have no idea what an "Alibi Room" is -- have you?
Having been educated about the dam once, we though we should be again. At the visitor centre, we saw part of a film about the construction effort, which we left early in order to make it to the power plant tour. The tour guide genuinely said "things have changed a little on the project since 9/11". This was a perfectly reasonable thing to say, because things had. We had to undergo a metal detector check, and part of the tour -- where we would have got to see a turbine actually spinning -- was omitted.
The sheer scale and ambition of the building project scarcely bears thinking about. Several communities were destroyed to make way for the backwash, and hundreds of Native American graves were moved. Nobody could say that the project wasn't a success though -- as well as generating power for a huge chunk of the US West (not including most of California, but including Los Angeles, explaining how LA escaped the recent power crisis), the dam provides irrigation for millions of acres of land in the Columbia Basin. If it weren't for this dam, all of that land would be barren. It seems to me that this willingness to shape the landscape is one reason for the US's prosperity.
After the tour, we got on the road. For this stretch it was corn as far as eyes could see. We stopped for lunch in a tiny town called Creston. Our book recommended Deb's Cafe, but although it looked the part, it was shut, so we went to the Corner Cafe opposite.
It was more corn fields from then on, with the occasional irrigation system to break the monotony.
We stopped in Spokane, because it's the last big city we're going to see between here and Ottowa. We spent a while in a mall, then explored the riverside park. The main reason for this was to look for the "Radio Flyer" wagon mentioned in the guide book. There was more art in the park than that, however.
After Spokane the scenery returned to archetypal Washington mountains and conifers, and we crossed the state border into Idaho. Arriving in the domestic tourism town of Sandpoint, we set about finding a bed for the night. This was hampered by horrendous roadworks. We landed in the La Quinta hotel pretty much determined that whatever the price, we'd take it. All they had was a suite for $199, so we neatly forgot our determination and moved on. We're now residents of the Lakeside Motel, with a nice harbour view from our window.
We strolled out for dinner and stumbled on a Mexican restaurant.Once we were seated, and our iced waters and nachos were served, unprompted (putting paid to any ideas we had about ordering starters), a waitress came and took our orders. She said "The guy who server you your water came back and said 'they're so cute!' and I was like 'Oh my God!' but I thought, hey it's my table, I'll go for it.". When she came back a second time, she started telling us how exciting it was for us to be here because "My sister has just done this, like, one year project all about Australia." When I told her we were British she was visibly disappointed, but it worked out OK because it turns out she's a big fan of Ground Force on the BBC Channel...
For some reason she also decided to tell us about how most of the restaurant staff got caught skinnydipping in the lake last night by the local police. I told her we'd get some binoculars and get down to the lakeside tonight. We won't. I'm tired.
It's been hot all day; we've seen thermometers reading 100 Farenheit, but the Weather Channel tells us it's been 128 Farenheit in Death Valley so we should really be grateful. And we can always go skinnydipping with the local service industry workers to cool down.