A Little Story About My Trip Down the Salmon River

August 4, 1994 - I woke up relatively late for a change; Tiana had already gone out to buy laundry detergent. When she returned, she said Rich and John (oh yes - I forgot to mention, our friend John met us at the hotel again when we arrived yesterday - he's just finished his summer fieldwork and is about to head back to Case Western Univ. - he crashed on Dom & Rich's hotel room floor last night) were just heading downstairs for breakfast. I quickly dressed and joined them in the hotel restaurant. Spent the rest of the morning packing and waiting for the laundry to get done. Around noon, we finally got packed up, checked out of the hotel, and all drove (a 4 car convoy, for 5 people) North to Moscow (Idaho), where we had a very nice lunch of fancy pizzas at the Spudnik Cafe. Did some shopping, bought a nice wooden vase, said our various good-byes, and hit the road. We are all going in different directions for now - Missoula, Coeur d'Alene, and Grand Coulee Dam.

Tiana and I drove northwest, toward Grand Coulee Dam, doing about 80 mph on 2-lane state roads. We spotted an eagle on a signpost, and stopped to take pictures of it.

We arrived at the dam around 7:30, looked around the visitor center a bit, asked about camping. They sent us to Spring Canyon State Park, a few miles away. It's not very pleasant, but at least it's a place to sleep. Lots of asphalt, lots of RV's and powerboats on trailers. Some of the "campsites" even have roofs over them! Sheesh!! We found a spot, pitched our tent, and drove back into town. Had a little dinner (fettuccine pesto; not bad) at an Italian place called That Italian Place (yeah, really!), and just made it back to the dam for the 9:30 laser light show. It was impressively large, spanning most of the surface of the dam, but we felt it was rather tacky and propagandist (especially in the way it avoided dealing with the environmental costs of the dam project), and we left before the show was over.

August 5 - Yesterday, most of our drive had been through rolling hills of golden wheat. Today, driving West from Grand Coulee, the scenery progressed through desolate rangeland to apple orchards, to forested foothills, to the broken craggy peaks of the Northern Cascades. We made brief stops to do souvenir shopping in Twisp (a tiny, quiet town) and Winthrop (clearly the center for tourism in the area), where there was much talk of all the local forest fires (20 new ones from lightning strikes yesterday alone, though only 1 or 2 not fully contained).

We stopped at the forest service info station at Mazama, where a friendly S.C.A. ranger told us about a couple hikes we could do in the National Forest there. But he was completely unhelpful about what might be available in the neighboring National Park. We speculated on the possibility of some deep-seated inter-departmental antagonism as the cause of this apparently complete lack of information sharing. Isn't it obvious that many visitors will want to know what else there is to do in the area, without having to drive all the way to the National Park Info Ctr.? We decided the Park might be better than the Forest, so we did the 60 miles to Newhalem. On the way, we stopped to admire various peaks, and Diablo Lake, shining in its own peculiar hue of green.

At Newhalem, we visited the brand new Visitor Center and asked about hikes. We got some excellent suggestions from a very friendly park ranger named Janette. Then we set up camp in the campground for the night. Later, we made ourselves some dinner - I cooked - rice and beans and beans, and talked about the possibility of moving out West.

August 6 - Scrambled eggs for breakfast, then we packed ourselves some lunch and drove up to Diablo to find the Sourdough Mtn. Trailhead.

Sourdough is a pretty tough hike - 5200 ft elevation gained in 5.2 miles makes it pretty steep. We spent 3 1/2 hours getting to the top, me with my slow but steady pace, Tiana going fast then pausing to rest while I caught up. We met a pair of guys from Detroit who hiked with us more than we'd've liked; we tried to avoid them. The hike started with steep switchbacks through forest, then did a steep traverse across a fairly open face. A few more really steep switchbacks put us on the ridge, where it was a short stroll past a couple of dwindling snowy patches to the lookout hut, where we met Glen, the firetower lookout. At the trailhead, we had found a padlock with a note saying "please take this lock to the lookout tower", so we had stuffed it in one of our daypacks. Glen was glad to get it, and plied us with lemonade (made with water from the melting snowfield) in return.

We rested and basked in the sun, and finished off my 9th roll of film since leaving NJ. After an hour and a half, we headed back down. On the downhills, Tiana goes slower than I - the reverse of our uphill roles. At one point, we heard something big and bear-like moving around in the trees about 50 yards off the trail. When we got to the cars back at the trailhead, our "friends" from Detroit, who had descended in front of us, said they had in fact seen a bear at about that point on the trail. For better or worse, we had only heard it.

We stopped for a pint of ice cream in Newhalem (we tried to save most of it for dessert, but it melted before we were done with dinner). At camp, we rested, made dinner, played a few hands of gin (T. won), then went to bed fairly early. I got less than enough sleep, because my legs hurt too much for me to get comfortable. But Tiana says I was snoring a lot.

August 7 - Cooked up an extravagant breakfast of eggs and oatmeal (trying to use up all our food). Got packed up and on the road by 9:45. Had an uneventful drive back to the Sea-Tac Marriott Hotel. And the music on the radio was really good all the way!

Rich called from the History of Flight Museum around 4:00, by which time we had decided to drive down to Pioneer Square, do the underground tour, and have dinner at La Buca, which Bronco had recommended. Tiana and I wandered around Pioneer Square for a while, had an espresso at Starbucks ("When in Rome..."), then met Rich at the Underground Tour. The tour was fascinating, uncovering a whole layer of Seattle history that one would never have guessed at otherwise.

August 8 - Flew back to New Jersey and the real world - tired, tanned, and exhilarated from a truly wonderful, unforgettable vacation.