Running the Roads-August 2

We made the 10AM tour at Grand Coulee.  It was interesting, although I didn’t understand all that “Bob” was telling us. hysics wasn't my strong suit in high school so I was depending on a fourth or fifth grade electicity with a potato experiment trying to demonstrate the concept of current.  I did find out that electricity can’t be stored so all the windmills we have seen sitting idle are because either there is no wind blowing or there is no need for electricity to be generated.  Most of the windmills we have seen have been sitting idle. Took our lunch up to an overlook of the dam and enjoyed it there. Afterwards we went to Dry Falls.  This area is larger than Niagara Falls by about 4x and about 2 and a half times as high.  The only difference is that there is no water falling over the cliff.  There was, centuries ago when the glaciers ruled the world. There was a catastrophic flood(sound familiar?) as the glaciers broke up and the water gushed over most of eastern Washington cutting up the ground as the ice and water pushed downhill. The dam was designed primarily for irrigation and has succeeded magnificently.  About 500,000 acres benefit from the irrigation and that allows Washington to be a big agricultural player. A by-product of the dam would be the electricity generated.  Begun in 1933(the New Deal Stimulus Project) the plant provided electricity for war production when it came along in ’41.  By the 1950s the demand for electricity had grown and has grown more in ensuing years so a 3^rd power plant has been added.  Let’s face it, what do we do that doesn’t involve electricity? I am really glad we made the detour up to the dam, and I am glad we saw Hoover Dam first because this is so much bigger that I may well have been disappointed if I’d seen this first and then Hoover.  No photos ready for uploading so will wait until next post.