decidedlyodd

This weekend, a bunch of us went camping at Steamboat Rock State Park which is located on a peninsula in Banks Lake, an artificial lake on the bottom of the Grand Coulee in eastern Washington. The geology of the area is fascinating. The coulee was not formed by a standard river, but rather a series of the largest geologically evidenced floods in the world. See the Wikipedia article on the Missoula Floods for more info. There’s a big geological feature in the middle of the peninsula where the park gets the name Steamboat Rock from,

I put in a half day of work on Friday, which I worked at home to minimize the time spent commuting and to maximize the time to get work and trip preparations done. Including stopping in Cle Elum for food (at a restauarant with the slowest service I’ve experienced in a long time) and supplies, it took us about 5 hours to travel the about 240 miles out there.

On Saturday Robert, Ben, Jeff and I went for a bike ride from the campground to Coulee City for a total of about 40 miles. There was one fairly serious hill and some other minor ones, but the major difficulty with the ride was that it was extremely hot. Heading to Coulee City wasn’t too bad, but coming back the temperature on Ben’s thermometer was 100F under blazing sun. Apparently, the weather was unseasonably warm even there (normal is around 75F for this time of year). Fortunately, I had plenty of water. After getting back to camp, we went swimming in the lake which was actually still a bit cold (even with the scorching temperatures).

This morning, we stopped in Coulee Dam (it’s the city next to the Grand Coulee Dam) for breakfast at what Jeff Roberts described as “the ugliest restaurant entrance in Washington”.

On the road home, we briefly stopped near Vantage at the viewpoint overlooking the Columbia River.

It was nice to get out of the city for a bit and get in some camping.

Photos are here.