Grand Coulee 2018
by Mike Thompson, 6/24/2018
Jane having sent her 4th and 5th graders home at the end of the school year, we did a three-day trip to eastern Washington to open her Summer Vacation with some paddling and sight-seeing. On this trip east of the Cascades we spent most of our time up around Grand Coulee Dam. On the drive back home we followed the Columbia River downstream and found a nice spot to paddle at the mouth of the Chelan River.
Our first paddle was near the north end of Banks Lake. Rather than driving over to the boat ramp at the big Steamboat Rock State Park camping area, we found a small boat ramp right next to Highway 155 at the bottom of Northrup Canyon. We've paddled here before and really love this area, with its pillows of gray to rose-colored granite and pine trees, grasses, sage, and cattails growing at the water's edge. It's a very pretty, easy paddle, with good protection from the wind.
We spent the next two nights at a hotel in the little town of Coulee Dam, right across the road from the dam's spillway. We woke early both mornings and did some reading while sitting out on our little deck, warming in the sun while eyeing the dam, the river, and an osprey in her nest on a power pole about a hundred yards away. Our first morning there we took the tour, where I got this picture from the top of the dam looking straight down the spillway to the water several hundred feet below.
After breakfast we drove east on Highway 174, up and out of the gorge, across beautiful, rolling hills covered with grain, and then back down into the gorge at the Keller Ferry crossing. Here we put in and paddled across Lake Roosevelt, along the bottom of the cliffs on the other side of the river, and then back to the little marina. There's a lot of Lake Roosevelt, with not much access to it by road. We watched a Boy Scout troop paddle off in a half-dozen canoes on a multi-day camping trip. You could find a hundred little beaches and coves where you could pitch your tent along the river out here.
The last day we stopped on our way out of town to take this picture of Grand Coulee Dam from the top of Crown Point, then followed Highway 174 west toward Chief Joseph Dam. The drives out here are really beautiful, especially in May and June when the wildflowers are in bloom and so much is still green from the spring rains.
We followed the river west and then south. Along the way we stopped for another pretty paddle at Beebe Bridge Park, just across from where the Chelan River empties into the Columbia. We paddled up to the Beebe Bridge, ferried across the river, and paddled down along the west side to just below the powerhouse at the mouth of the Chelan River. There was quite a strong current there, and the water had that distinctive Lake Chelan clarity and celadon green color. Beneath our canoe we watched a school of big salmon, swimming against the current to hold their position over the rocky bottom. Then we paddled back across the Columbia, put the canoe on the car, and headed home over Stevens Pass on Highway 2.