September 14 - 25, 2007

Well, we are back in the motorhome. We flew from Philadelphia to Spokane, WA, on September 14. On the 15th we took Molly Habel (Jennifer’s daughter) and 3 of her friends out to dinner. On the 16th we drove around Spokane and walked the Spokane River Walk. It was a beautiful day and we just enjoyed the park-like atmosphere of the River Walk. There is an old carousel that has been beautifully restored with its original calliope put back into working order. It is inside a building built especially for it. The music from the calliope is heard along the River Walk and sounds really great.

We had to wait for our mail to arrive, but while we waited we learned a lot about the area. The entire southeast part of the state has been formed by many Ice Age Floods. These are also called the Missoula Floods or the Great Flood.

First, there were many volcanic eruptions that laid down lava to a depth of about 6,000 feet across Idaho and all the way to the foot of the mountains in Washington. If the lava cools quickly, it is just a porous rock. If it cools slowly it forms into 5 sided columns of porous rock. When you look at the sides of the cliffs, you can see that sometimes the top part is just porous rock and under that there are columns of basalt. You can see that in lots of our photos.

About 15,000 to 13,000 years ago, an arm of the glaciers came down into Montana near Missoula. As it advanced, it completely blocked off the Clark Fork River. The water flowing up the river had nowhere to go and just backed up to form a HUGE lake containing 500 cubic miles of water. Eventually the ice dam holding back the river couldn’t contain the water any longer and the water breached the ice dam. It is believed (because no one can really remember…) that the entire Lake Missoula emptied itself in 48 hours. As the water made its way to the Pacific Ocean it scoured the land breaking away the basalt lava and tearing up anything in its way in its rush to the Ocean. As it tore away the basalt it carried the broken-off pieces along with it until the current slowed down enough to let them drop onto the bottom. Also, since the raging water had broken apart the glacier damming up the river, there were huge ice flows with huge boulders frozen inside. As the ice melted and the current slowed, these huge boulders were dropped to the bottom and just stayed there. (Some of these rocks are granite from Canada. These rocks that are not from the local area and are just sitting there all by themselves are called “erratics”.) This same “ice damming the river” process was repeated dozens of times with the new water tearing away more and more of the cliff walls until the cliffs are 400’ to 500’ high.

In addition to the Clark Fork River being dammed by an glacier, the north flowing section of the Columbia River in Washington state also was blocked by a glacier. The River overflowed its banks and found a new route to the Pacific Ocean. It flowed through this alternate river bed for a long time and created the canyon that is now known as the Grand Coulee.

When the next Ice Age Flood from Glacier Lake Missoula broke through the ice, it had the nice Grand Coulee river bed path to follow for part of its trip to the Ocean. There is one section south of where the Columbia was blocked near Grand Coulee Dam known as the Dry Falls. This is where the basalt had been worn back by the water flowing over a cliff making a waterfall that undercut the cliff so that it moved back 20 miles from where it used to be. This Dry Falls is 3 ½ miles across and 300 to 400 feet deep. When the water from the Ice Age Floods went over the falls the water was 400 to 500 feet deep. That made for a 700’ to 900’ waterfall. The water was so deep that there really was no actual falls, there was just a “dip” in the running water.

All of this water got bottled up trying to get through the mountains. The only way to the Ocean was through the Columbia Gorge, the river bed of the Columbia River, which is the border of Washington and Oregon. The water was so backed up that it formed a lake in the northwestern part of Oregon and dropped all of the good basalt top soil that it scoured off the ground in Washington onto the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

Now that you know the geology of the area, you’ll be able to understand our absolute fascination with the rocks, cliffs, erratics and river beds of this area.

On Tuesday, Sept 18, we drove south to the Tri-Cities area of Richland, Pasco and Kennewick to see what we could learn about the Hanford Site. Before 1942 Albert Einstein had written a letter to FDR about the German scientists coming to the US and the possibility of using uranium and plutonium for bombs. During 1942, after Pearl Harbor, the US Government was looking for a place that was about 600 square miles, near a city of 10,000 people, had few people living on the site itself, and had an abundant supply of water and electricity. The Government identified an area north of Richland that had only 2 small villages and 1500 “head” of Indians and fit the other requirements. In December 1942 the residents of the 2 small villages, the Indians and any farmers and ranchers in the area received letters from the Government telling them they had 30 days to vacate their premises and get off the land. They were given payments based on the Depression Era values that had been in effect in the 1930’s. Lots of people were unhappy with the amount of their payment, but it was the War atmosphere and people wanted to do whatever it took to win the war. (In the last 20 years or so, people have sued the Government for more appropriate payments and many have won more money.) In March of 1943 the first buildings were going up on the Hanford Site. The small town of Richland saw a building boom as the Government built housing for the people who were pouring in to work at the Site. (Architects designed 26 different houses, duplexes and multi-family buildings and named them “A”, “B”, “C”, etc up through “Z”. These houses were only rented to workers during the time the Site was active. Later they were sold to the people living in them or put up for sale to the public. We drove around the area and saw LOTS of the houses that have either been remodeled or left exactly like they were.) The Grand Coulee Dam had just been completed and power lines were run to the Site. “B Reactor” was built and the process of turning Uranium 238 into Plutoniam 238 was started.

I KNOW that this is a very simplified explanation of what occurs, but I am not a scientist. The Uranium 238 is formed into pellets or into slugs and many of these are put into the middle of a double walled tube. Water flows in the hollow space in the tube around the outside of the pellets or slugs. These tubes are placed in a specific pattern in blocks of graphite drilled with holes for the tubes. The uranium is then bombarded with neutrons that sends all of the atoms running around bumping into each other. When they hit each other hard enough they change into Uranium 239, then into Neptunium 239 and then into Plutonium 239.

(Jim and Brian, if you read this please do NOT fall off of you chair laughing!)

(As an aside, Uranium contains 99.28% Uranium 238 and .72% Uranium 235. In Oak Ridge, TN, they separated the Uranium 235 from the Uranium 238 in a very complicated process based on the very slight difference in weight of the two. This Uranium 235 was used in the bomb Little Boy. The Oak Ridge site also developed and tweaked the Plutonium making process used at the Handford site.)

The plutonium itself is separated out by processing chemically and in a centrifuge. The plutonium was then carried IN SOMEONE’S BRIEFCASE to Los Alamos to be first tested and then actually used in the bomb Fat Man.

However, now that they have made and removed the Plutonium, there is a LOT of radio-active waste water as well as the spent uranium fuel cells. All of this has to be stored somewhere because they don’t have any place yet to dispose of it! The original tanks that stored the waste were single walled tanks and there was some problem with them leaking. New double walled tanks (steel, then concrete with small air channels for cooling, then steel) have solved that problem and NONE of the double-walled tanks show signs of leaking. There is hope that a new process (new to us, the French have apparently been using it for years) that turns this waste into a glass that can be stored safely for 1 million years will be approved soon. Then the waste will be turned into glass and trucked to the Yucca Mountain in Nevada. (The people in Nevada are not real happy about this…)

The last reactor that was built (in the 1950’s) was designed so that it could also produce power for the Site itself. It wasn’t used for long, but it was very efficient when it was in use. The reactors use a LOT of electricity. They were getting it from the Grand Coulee Dam until the Bonneville Dam came on line. Then they generated enough power themselves with the power plant (completed about 1963) in conjunction with the last reactor that they could actually put some power back into the grid.

There has not been any Plutonium produced at the plant since the 1980’s. However, they still employ thousands of people to maintain the site, monitor the waste tanks, and work on the vitrification process.

We went to this museum (CREHST) that had so much information on the internet. When we pulled up to it, Mark said “This CAN’T be the place!” because it looked more like a run-down VFW Hall. However, we went in anyway and paid our $2.50 admission. WOW, what a place. We couldn’t see and read and understand all that we wanted to in one afternoon, so they marked our ticket so that we could come back again the next day! The men who work the front desk are all retired workers from the Hanford Site and know it inside and out. They are SO happy to share everything they know with someone who is interested. We rate it a “10”.

When we left the Museum we drove out Route 243 which actually goes through the Hanford Site. We could see some of the buildings off in the distance, but the land sure is a lot of nothing. Once a year they have public tours of the Site. They are in October, but we won’t be there then…

Washington is definitely DAM country. The mightly Columbia River has at least 14 dams along it route from British Columbia to Oregon and the Pacific. It is wonderful the way the power plants can use the water to generate electricity, spit it out the bottom of the turbines and send it on down the river to be used again at the next power plant! Talk about a renewable energy source! The largest dam is the Grand Coulee Dam but it is a “peaking dam” so it only produces power when it is needed, not all the time. If power is needed in the grid, they flip a switch and are generating power within 20 seconds! We got a tour of the power house in the new section of the dam.

The Dam was first proposed in the 1920’s as an irrigation project. In the 1930’s FDR asked Congress to approve it as a power project as well. He managed to get it financed by making it part of the WPA projects instead of asking Congress for money for a dam. FDR was a firm believer that the GOVERNMENT should own the dams and generate the electricity, not big businesses. Before the irrigation part could begin, the War made the need for power in the Northwest for manufacturing war material the most urgent need. After the war the irrigation project was again a priority. There are now 2,300 miles of irrigation canals irrigating 500,000 acres of desert. “Desert” is the key word. As you drive along, where the land is irrigated it is green, fertile, beautiful farmland. If you look 50’ past the fields, where there is no irrigation, it is simply desert. Again, the photos will show that “Water is everything” when it comes to farming.

We visited three dams along with the fish ladders at two of them. Grand Coulee does not have a fish ladder or any way for the young fish to get to the ocean. However, the rest of the Columbia River is quite concerned about getting the baby salmon out to the ocean and getting the adult salmon back to spawn. During the 5 months or so that the salmon come back upriver to spawn, there is actually a live person sitting at a computer watching the fish go up the fish ladder for 16 hours a day counting the number of each species of fish! I don’t know if fish aren’t allowed to go through for the other 8 hours or if they extrapolate their data to fill in that missing time… There are fish nets at the underwater entrances to most of the power plants to divert the young salmon to tubes along the sides of the dam. There they are counted and sorted by size. The largest fish are allowed to fend for themselves and continue downstream braving other dams and other predators. The smallest fish are actually pulled out and transported in either huge barges or tanker trucks down to the river below the last dam so that they have a better chance of making it to the open ocean to grow to adult size.

We drove along Route 2 to Wenatchee, WA, and then on to the Bavarian Village of Leavenworth. It reminded us of Fredicksburg, TX. Nice quaint shops. What impressed us was that every building went along with the Bavarian theme, including NAPA Auto Parts and McDonalds. Most of the design work to make things look Bavarian were actually just painted on the buildings. That is a really inexpensive way to create an atmosphere without a lot of rebuilding. (See photos) Someone there asked about accommodations during the “off season” and the Visitor Information lady told them there was NO “off season”.

On Sunday, Sept 23, we drove to Chelan at the south end of Lake Chelan. This is a glacier formed and glacier fed lake that is about 60 miles long, 1300’-1400’ deep, and about 1 mile wide at most points. At its deepest point the bottom of the lake is about 350’ below sea level! It is so deep that the lake never freezes. The mountains are up to 10,500’ high surrounding the lake. We took a flight-seeing ride in a Beaver seaplane with a pilot who REALLY gave us a great tour. We flew up the lake and over the mountains to see the glaciers, Mount Ranier and the valleys formed by the creeks running down from the mountains. On the west side of the lake you can drive about 1/4 of the way up the lake to 25 Mile Creek State Park where the road then winds its way inland for a while. Further up the west side we saw a Lutheran Retreat that is about 11 miles up into the mountains from the river and is accessible only by a dirt road from the river. It is an old copper mining camp that was “donated” to the church when it was no longer profitable in 1957. On the east side of the lake you can drive only as far as the unincorporated village of Manson, about 1/5 of the way up the lake. In the late 1800’s a “Native American” named Wapato settled the spit of land that juts into the Lake at its narrowest point. (This is also where the glacier the formed the lake ended as the Ice Age ended and the glaciers retreated.) The state recognized his right to the property when the area was settled and he had the right to lease all of his land with 99 year leases. There is other private property in the area, but most of the land is leased from the Wapato family.

We followed a creek valley down from the mountains and approached Stehekin at the north end of Lake Chalen. With a beautiful landing we taxied up to the dock and had 1 hour to wander around the village and visit the Visitor’s Center. Then we picked up 3 more people to fly back down to Chelan. There is a dam at the south end of Lake Chelan, but it is really not used to dam up the lake. It is only used for flood control and, if there is enough water, to send a powerful stream of water through an underground pipe down to the Columbia River to run a small power generating plant. The authorities are releasing enough water through the dam right now to lower the lake level by about 1 ½ inches each day in order to prepare for the spring snow melt.

We stayed in Chelan on Monday so I could do some sewing projects and Mark could do a few projects on the motorhome.

Tuesday, Sept 25, we left for Twisp and Winthrop. Winthrop is a very small town that has cooperated in making their very small downtown section look like a Western town. It was a fun place to walk around for 10 minutes or so. Since neither Mark nor I are really into shopping, it didn’t take us long to walk the streets! We picked up our mail today.

We went to the local airport to visit the Smokejumper base. This Methow Valley site is the “birthplace of smoke jumping”. In 1939 the Forest Service wanted to find a better way to fight forest fires. Parachuting was NOT well-known at the time. In fact, there was really only one place in the country where it was being done with any kind of regularity and safe record—Eagle Parachute Company of Lancaster, PA. The military didn’t use parachutes; it was not a sport; nobody did it. Congress didn’t like the idea of using parachutes to jump in and fight forest fires, so they searched for the most rugged terrain in the country and settled on the West Cascades in Washington. Parachute jumpers from Lancaster came to Washington and made a series of jumps to show how it could be done and trained some of the forest service workers how to parachute in. In 1940 there was a call for smokejumpers to fight a newly forming fire and one of the original men from Lancaster and one newly trained forest service firefighter jumped from a Stinson airplane to fight the fire. It worked, and a second base was established at Missoula, MT. Additional bases have been added where there is danger from forest fires. There are a TOTAL of abut 400 smokejumpers in the US. They are very proud of themselves and how fit and self-sufficient they are. Their training (according to the smokejumper who gave us the tour) makes the SEAL training look like boot camp.

Today we will leave to drive to Darrington to visit Aunt Betty Bryson and then on to Arlington to visit the rest of the Brysons. Then we will visit the western part of Washington state!

We sure are enjoying this life of travel!!

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