Index, WA

Index is one of my favorite places in WA.  The town is maybe 1 mile off of Route 2 between Gold Bar and Skykomish, snuggled up to the North Fork Skykomish river.  I first visited because of the interesting name, quickly to find that the town is named after the towering peak just south of the town & Route 2.  Mt. Index is really impressive because it is so steep, so there aren't many trees along it's steep, solid, rocky slopes.  I spoke to a few people who mentioned the frequent winter sound of small avalanches crumbling down the mountainside.  Apparently the steep slopes don't allow enough snow to accumulate into dangerous avalanches.

The town itself is mainly a bridge from the access road (which used to go to mining encampments Mineral, WA and Galena, WA, but is now washed out by the river) and a smattering of old homes and a few businesses: a small post office-convenience store, a fire station, tiny elementary school, town museum, and outdoors shop with summer and winter rentals, a restaurant and cafe.  There is a very old, dilapidated hotel along the sheer rock wall to the west of the town which was condemned after the most recent minor earthquake the region experienced.  A local dude said the owners are planning to rebuild it like the original, including a restaurant on the first floor which was quite popular right up until the earthquake.

The 'Bush House' Inn.  Town Wall in the background.

There is a large swath of state-owned land to the southwest and northeast of town, which will eventually become a state park.  "Forks of the Sky State Park" is the name...and if you were thinking there are only mountains and trees in the sky around here--no forks, you are not alone.  I was perplexed about what local feature looked like forks poking into the sky, until a very friendly local dude named Scott politely informed me the Skykomish river is locally referred to as 'Sky' and the North and South Forks branch off just down-river from Index.  Now the name makes sense!

As for the town of Index, it seems mostly local people hang out in the area, which explains why it isn't overrun with touristy visitors, trash, commercial development and developed trails.  The Index Town Wall is a rock face rising up above the town and is apparently well-known to regional climbers.  Under the wall and through town, the Skykomish river is fairly narrow and fast-flowing.  Upriver, north of Index the North Fork Sky spreads out into a wide, shallow, bubbly, bouldery horizontal cascade of water.  During dry times the banks are wide with rocks, boulders and gravel sized stones, but in wet times the river consumes the banks and trees float down the river.  I found a perfect place along the river which is definitely in my top 5 places to be in Washington, maybe on the earth!  The access to the river, along with the sound, smell and solitude provide a sense of contemplative energy which invigorates my mind and body.

The Grand Coulee Dam: worth the trip to Central Washington, trust me.

IT IS THE BIGGEST POWER PLANT IN THE USA!

The Grand Coulee Dam is worth going out of your way to visit just like the Empire State Building, Fenway Park, Golden Gate Bridge, Washington Monument, etc.  It has a museum that makes boring things like hydropower and dam-building interesting, there are bald eagles feasting on the fish at the bottom of the spillway almost all year round, a laser-light show at night for people who like laser-light shows, and it is relatively in the middle of nowhere so you have to take a fun road-trip to get there.  They have tours that take you across the top of the dam, but it is just as impressive from across town as it is from on top.  The Grand Coulee Dam is just huge and historic.

Even if you really don't like dams, you can still enjoy a visit to the Grand Coulee Dam because nearby attractions include Banks Lake (filling up the upper Grand Coulee), Roosevelt Lake (the lake behind the Grand Coulee Dam), Colville Indian reservation (Chief Joseph's grave isn't too far away in Nespelem) and the Columbia River (which flows downstream from the dam for a while before it is impounded by Chief Joseph dam, which is not worth visiting).  All these lakes have ample rural outdoorsy opportunities like fishing, boating, hiking, hunting, etc.

In this photo, the spillway gates are being opened.

I believe the Grand Coulee Dam to be a great example of smart government working with and for the people.  The Dam provides power to the entire region, without using carbon fuels.  The dam enables a thriving agricultural district South of the dam.  The irrigated area is very productive despite the natural shrub-steppe desert ecosystem.  The dam regulates water melting down from the snowpack of the Canadian Rockies and all of the upper Columbia River which has contributed to fewer destructive flooding incidents on the Columbia River.  Most importantly to me, the dam was a monumental project that was larger than anything that existed at the time.  The construction of it put thousands of people to work during a time of economic hardship in the 1930s.  The project continues to provide economic value to the surrounding area by way of tourism, recreation, scientific & engineering research, agriculture, wages, and water...showing how successful a well planned government super-project can be.

Summer Falls

Waterfalls aren't exactly common in the desert of central washington, so anyplace you can find the sound of cascading water is special.  Finding Summer Falls may be tricky, but the surrounding country roads that cut through coulees and follow abandoned railroad routes are very picturesque, so I would plan to get a little lost and enjoy it. The park is like an oasis at the end of a rocky, dusty driveway: a well-irrigated grassy park with trees, picnic tables, restrooms and a pavilion, all nestled up against Billy Clap Lake and the waterfall.

Note: the only water recreation here is fishing: there is no beach and people have been seriously injured from falling on the slippery rocks of the falls.  The falls are, however, very accessible if you have two legs and don't mind the "KEEP OUT" signs.  If you are looking for desert hikes, there are plenty nearby (including Sun Lakes/Dry Falls state park), but not at Summer Falls.  This park is a pretty sedentary place unless you are throwing frisbee or football in the grassy park.

These falls and the depth of Billy Clap Lake they flow into were created when an irrigation canal was built to bring water from Banks Lake (itself a product of water diverted from the Grand Coulee Dam) to what was then dry, rocky, sagebrushy non-farmland further south.  There is also a tiny, discrete power plant just up the canal from the falls.  So the lake is a coulee that is full of water, and the water coming down the falls is what is leftover from the canal after the power plant takes it's share.  It sounds pretty industrial, but it's not: the irrigation and power generating functions of the water are invisible at Summer Falls.  Summer Falls is a good place--maybe the only place--to enjoy the relaxing sound of a waterfall amidst the area's desert landscape.

Dams of Central WA

Dry Falls Dam is an earth-filled dam that carries US Route 2 and WA Route 28 on top of it.  It is the south border of Banks Lake, which it impounds by stretching across the grand coulee right in the middle: where there are no coulee walls.  Banks Lake submerses the Grand Coulee north of the dam, and south of the dam are the Dry Falls.  There is a spillway(?) that diverts water from banks lake to a canal that ends up through a small power generating station before flowing over Summer Falls and into Billy Clapp Lake.  It isn’t much to look at, but Banks Lake and the upper Coulee and Dry Falls State Park and the lower Coulee can be breathtakingly beautiful.

Grand Coulee Dam impounds the Columbia River where it flows extremely close to the Grand Coulee.  It is the centerpiece of a Bureau of Reclamation project to pump water out of the big Lake Roosevelt (which was created by all the impounded water behind the Grand Coulee Dam) into the grand coulee, filling it up with water which could then be used for irrigating the barren desert land south of the dam.  The spillway is predictably enormous and loud when they release water over it.  If you are lucky enough to be there whey they first open the spillway gates, you will never forget it.  

The reason it is worth visiting, is because it is enormous.  I could write about it's enormousness, or the engineering accomplishments, the displaced tribes whose homeland was flooded by Lake Roosevelt--the man-made lake created behind Grand Coulee Dam...but Wikipedia does a better job.  Suffice it to say the dam is enormous and beautiful like the Sears Tower, Eiffel Tower, Golden Gate Bridge are beautiful.  

It is a beautiful, maybe the best, example of huge government projects using taxpayer money wisely.  How can I say that?!  The Grand Coulee Dam is the largest power plant in the united states!  It was built with huge amounts of people during a time jobs were nowhere to be found.  It inspired novel construction techniques and is the furthest upriver dam on the Columbia so that means the water flowing over and through the Grand Coulee Dam goes through XXX number of dams before it hits the ocean on the Oregon/Washington coast.  I hope I don’t make enemies by saying this: but the little towns above and below the dam are really lame.  They don’t have small-town charm nor are they developed tourism centers--despite the tourist draw of the Dam.   Go for the Dam experience.  Here is my best image of the dam.  Here is another post about it.


Rocky Reach Dam is an dam, man! Read about it on wikipedia. 


Wells Dam is on the Columbia River, and I'm sure I've driven past it, but for whatever reason I have no recollection of anything significant about it.  Here is the wikipedia article on it.

Priest Rapids Dam is a dam on the Columbia River.  Here is the Wikipedia page about it.

Wanapum Dam was built by the Grant County PUD which still runs it.  I believe it submerged a few towns when it was built.  It is near the Hanford Works I believe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanapum_Dam

Rock Island Dam is on the Columbia down river from Wenatchee, just downriver from the mouth of Moses Coulee.  It was the first dam on the Columbia, but it is also kinda sad because the river and surrounding canyons are beautiful at this point, and I wish the natural rock islands for which the dam is named, were still around for people to enjoy.  Maybe it will be taken down someday since it is very small and doesn’t produce much power compared to other dams on the river.  It is remote enough I believe there is housing across the highway for the employees of the dam.  Here is the wikipedia link for this dam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Dam.

Gorges Dam is arguably in Western WA, but it is a dam and I’ve been there and it isn’t on the west coast, so I’m calling it a Central WA dam.  It is beautiful because of it’s setting and the fact it is so remote there is a small company town nearby to host the employees of it and the Diablo Dam and Ross Dam nearby.  I might be making that up...but there is a company town called Diablo and I’m almost positive it is for dam employees, and I can’t imagine it would only be for the Diablo Dam and not the other two nearby.  It has a huge old-fashioned building which I’ve not seen in any hydropower dams, but very similar to old coal-fired power plants I’ve seen back in the midwest.  There is a cool pedestrian bridge that crosses the green churning river below the dam, so this dam allows a visitor to get pretty close and intimate with both the workings of the dam and the living river that flows through it.

Chief Joseph Dam seems to be newer than most of the other dams in the area and appears disproportionately large for the Columbia river, given that it isn’t that far downstream from the grand coulee.  According to wikipedia, it has a novel shape in that it crosses the river in a V shape instead of being a straight line across the river.  Apparently this allows room for more power generating turbines to be fed by the flow of the river.  The dam is boring and the surrounding area isn’t that beautiful compared to that upriver and downriver of the dam.  There is a huge reversed ‘C’ shape of the Columbia River between the Chief Joseph Dam and the Rock Island Dam.  If one were to take a fairly direct overland route from Chief Joseph Dam to Rock Island Dam, it would be a beautiful one, starting in the glacial and ice-age-flood-shaped terrain south of Chief Joseph, continuing on through the highlands east of the Grand Coulee, then crossing over Grand Coulee over to Moses Coulee and down to where Moses Coulee meets the Columbia again at the bottom of that ‘C’ route of the Columbia. Here is a photo of the dam when I visited in the spring.

Some power-station-looking-thing near Quincy on an irrigation canal alongside route XX between Ephrata and Quincy.  I never saw much water flowing through the canal there, so I can’t imagine that it would be a power station, but there is a big building, water tower and locks or gates that control the flow of the canal right at the big building.

There is a dam that creates the Potholes Reservoir south of Moses Lake, WA.  I’m not sure what it is called but it is an earth-filled dam and the lake seems to be for recreational purposes.  It would be interesting to find out if Moses Lake is also used for irrigation.  From a topographic map, it appears that the Moses Lake Dam impounds all of the seepage and excess irrigation water that began in those pumps at the northernmost point of the Grand Coulee--where water is pumped from Lake Roosevelt into Banks Lake.

Lake Chelan Dam is an earth filled dam that makes Lake Chelan much higher and increases the lake size for recreational purposes.  I have absolutely no information to support this, other than from a topographic map it appears that Lake Chelan extends northwest from a blunt southern end that is so close to the Columbia River, it can’t be natural for it to end in a squared off fashion just miles away from a natural outflow channel--the Columbia River.  Here is the wikipedia article on the dam, hopefully I can travel there soon to take some photos and beef up that wikipedia site a little bit.

Tieton Dam is west of Yakima. It is near 'Tieton State Airport' (an airstrip for USFS firefighting operations) and it creates Rimrock Lake that had a forest fire nearby a few years ago when I was visiting.  Washington S.R.12 travels along Rimrock lake.  According to Wikipedia, the purpose of the dam is to provide irrigation to the arid land surrounding Yakima.


O'Sullivan Dam is an earth filled dam that creates Potholes reservoir and Moses Lake.


Pinto Dam is an earth fill dam that creates Billy Clapp Lake and there is some sort of power station thing there.


Lake Chelan Dam is an earth

Perch Lake

Perch Lake is my personal favorite place in the state of WA.  There is something indescribable about its location within the caverns of the Grand Coulee, amidst the boulders of ancient flood debris.  The towering walls of the Grand Coulee are built of vertical pillars of basalt rock, with outcroppings and terraces just like an ancient castle.  Those coulee walls also reflect sound in strange ways, so the fish flipping out of the water or the birds calling to their friends sound differently here, because of the echos and breezes.

There is a community of animals that welcome the frequent visitor to Perch Lake.  I appreciate the swallows which dart around and above the lake, eating insects, I assume.  Their pattern of flight is so erratic and sometimes they fly so close to my head I can hear the sound of their tiny wings flitting them through the air.  The perch themselves are pretty hospitable as well. When wind is calm and the lake is smooth like glass, they sometimes flop out of the water chasing after their dinner.  Lots of bees.  They aren’t as welcome, but for whatever reason they never posed a problem.  Ravens, Seagulls and Red Tailed Hawks seemed to share supremacy in the skies.  The sound of the Ravens’ cackle was so interesting when reflected off the lake water and coulee walls.  As with anyplace in the state park, the smell of sage fills the breeze, so if you don't smell it right away, just wait until the wind changes direction.  It is amazing and even on dusty days, you can it mixes in with dust and smells so fresh and amazing.  It is a very calming aroma, and provides a 'green' sensation in this desert region.

One of the most interesting things I observed for the first time at Perch Lake, was a cyclone shaped flock of seagulls above the lake.  I realized I could hear a bunch of seagulls but couldn’t see any.  But at a closer look, very, very high up in the air was a rotating cyclone of seagulls flying around each other.  They looked so tiny they were up so high.  Maybe this is normal behavior for seagulls, but it was the first time I’d seen or heard anything like it.  

Deer roam the park and seem to have become quite accustomed to humans.  Only once did I see one at Perch Lake, but it was memorable because the deer was descending the coulee wall behind the lake.  There are snakes, too.  The terrain is heavenly for western rattlesnakes, and others.  I mostly saw small snakes on the road after they were dead.  Once I thought I saw a recently dead snake, but then when I walked back by awhile later....it was gone!  I heard a rattle one time while on a trail, but I barely saw something crawling off the trail ahead in the periphery.  I really don’t know for sure it was a rattlesnake but I soiled my drawers as if it was one.  There were lots of quails in the park.  They were easily flushed from giant sagebrush if a hiker like myself walked too close.  It was sometimes startling, but more often I could hear them scurry away on the ground ahead and off the trail.

Bald eagles winter at the state park and are quite impressive to see in the wild.  The eagles can see very well and really don’t like humans, so it was nearly impossible to get any photos of them.  I never saw them very close to Perch Lake, but they were sometimes visible hovering above the edges of the coulee walls...reportedly taking advantage of updrafts on windy days.  They are huge birds.

Here are some more photos of Perch Lake:

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/42017616
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/61386183
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/61615594
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/62470589
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/19934864

The Great White Knob

I'm from the midwest.  So I may have an unusually strong interest in water and marine animals since there was such a dearth of them in the cornfields of central Illinois.  Immediately upon arriving in central WA, I was struck by the abundance of water.  (I soon found out, with the exception of the Columbia River, all that water comes from dams and canals.)  Many of my formative experiences in central WA were in the Grand Coulee, in and around its lakes.

A memorable experience was one in which I saw a wild pelican on Lake Lenore.  I've only seen photos of pelicans and maybe some on a vacation somewhere in California or Europe.  And at zoos probably.  But on this day I was driving up the Coulee on a sunshiny day, heading up to the state park to take photos, and I saw something huge on the water that was well-camoflauged against the white gleams of the sun reflecting off choppy waves on Lake Lenore.  As is often the case in the Coulee, the wind was strong.

I pulled off the road and got a couple shots of this thing with the zoom lens of the camera.  I know I would have to view the photos on the computer to fully identify the bird.  What was so strange to me was the fact the bird's bright yellow beak had a huge knob on the top.  As it turns out, this beak-knob is very common on American White Pelicans, which themselves are common in the Columbia Basin during their annual migration, but I didn't know it at the time and thought I was looking at some huge rare oceanic bird who got lost and ended up in Lake Lenore, in the deserts of central WA.  I don't remember what I was planning to photograph that day, but due to high wind and no tripod, my shots of the Beak Knob Bird came out pretty bad.  However, the photos did clearly identify the bird, and more importantly they started my nascent interest in native birds.

I increasingly notice the birds we see and hear in the periphery of everyplace we go in the great outdoors.  The sounds especially are worth getting to know--if for no other reason than to fully appreciate the quiet places in nature.

Hmm...here is one way to do this blog...

Now that I'm signed up for the web authoring class, I take a different view of this idea:  it is bad. If I was going to do something so simple, I should just do a lot of work to create a robust wikipedia entry for--say--Moses Coulee and then link to it from my blog and make it known that I wrote most of it.  -cmetz 11/19/11

This is basically one single page I can do whatever I want with, but if it is a topic such as Moses Coulee...I would have to do this:

Table of Contents

[link here to top section below]

[link here to the section below that]

[all these links would just go down the page]

then the content would begin.  I would have to embed the photos into this page ORRRR I already have the photos in Panoramio, so I can just link them to words in the text and make them open up in new windows!!

This would be a janky way to do this but it would be a start.