Sooooo Disappointed

Memorial weekend pretty much did us in as camphosts at Coulee City campground. It's too bad because walleye fishing was just starting to get good. I took a picture of this kid's walleye --35" long and almost 13 pounds -- he was very excited. We will also miss all of the great scenery we were getting to see. This is a picture of Lake Chelan about 80 miles northwest of Coulee City. A beautiful lake surrounded by mountains -- with snow still on the tops.

The holiday weekend brought us a campground full of rv'ers and tenters. It was finally warm enough to tent it. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that at least one fourth of our tenters only wanted to party all night and race through the park all day. After over three dozen visits, patrols, etc from the local police, county sheriffs and any other law enforcement we could get we decided enough was enough and gave our notice. The last straw was taking shifts with our other host couple to stay up all night in order to keep an eye on our stuff.

Most of our campers appreciated our efforts to keep the campground safe for their families although at least two families left because of the thievery, drunkedness and unsafe driving that went on in the park -- don't blame them and told them to demand refunds from the city. All we heard was to expect worse come fourth of July -- no thanks we are out of there.

We are now in Montana and are planning to tour Glacier National Park maybe go up into Banff and then down to Yellowstone before heading south again for the winter.

Grand Coulee Dam

We drove up to Grand Coulee. It is a very pretty drive between Coulee City and Grand Coulee because the road follows Banks Lake. The dam is incredible and there is a very nice visitors center that contains all kinds of stuff that was used during the building of it. They have a laser show at the dam when it gets dark starting Memorial Weekend that is supposed to be worth seeing.

We stopped at Steamboat Rock State Park along Banks Lake. I took a picture of the "steamboat rock". The rock broke off and was pushed out from the canyon wall during the great flood that caused the huge waterfall at Dry Falls way back at the end of the ice age.

We survived the walleye tournament at the park this past weekend. Most of the fishermen were nice guys but we had a few that made life miserable. The other problem with our park is that it doesn't have any closed hours. We have people drive through the park at 1AM -- slowly--and it makes us very nervous -- but they aren't breaking any rule so we are kind of stuck putting up with it. Not sure we are going to stay if we don't feel safe.

Smallmouth & Two Bears Falls

Jim caught a very nice smallmouth over 3 lbs. I still have yet to catch a fish. I also took a picture of this "falls". If you click on it to make it bigger you can see the two black spots that give it the the name "two bears falls".

We are getting ready for a big walleye tournament that takes place here on May 21st and 22nd. Guys are coming in a week early to "prefish" and get a camping spot. Our campground doesn't take reservations its strictly first come first serve. Jim gets to be out on the launch where the judges sit and watch as they start the tournament. Its fun to watch all the boats take off full blast to get out to their fishing spots. Last year some big walleyes were brought in -- up to 14 lbs.

We are not looking forward to Memorial Weekend. There is a rodeo in town and they say we might have 1000 people in the campground. There are only four of us camphosts and maybe and extra police officer on duty. We have decided to stick it out and see how it goes.

First Fish

We have had the boat out twice so far. The weather seems to be stuck in the 50's and the nice days are very windy. Jim managed to catch a nice trout. The meat is pink like a salmon and it was very tasty. We were also given a fresh caught "lingcod" or eelpout. I boiled it and we dipped it in butter -- poor man's lobster -- it was good.

We are fishing in Banks Lake and the sides of the lake are canyon walls. The white streaks along the walls are from spring waterfalls. We missed the actual falls -- that's when the snow is rapidly melting. Life here is a bit different with everything being a long drive. We had to go all the way to Spokane to get the trolling motor for the boat fixed. That is 180 miles round trip and when you are lucky to get 10 to12 miles to the gallon it gets expensive. There is a Walmart about 30 miles away so we are trying to stock up when we do drive that far. The good thing is there is a small grocery store here in Coulee City that sells good meat.

We are surviving the typical challenges of a new home for the summer -- finding good meat, good places to get things fixed, where to get haircuts and where there might be a good place to go out to eat. So far we haven't found much in the way of restaurants. The campground is nice so far -- not busy at all so we have it mostly to ourselves -- I should say us and another camphost couple. We work three days on and then have three days off and just keep rotating the schedule that way. We have met lots of nice local people -- who feed Jim cookies and cinnamon buns.

Dry Falls

The scenery close by our campground is beautiful even in springtime with not much greenery or flowers yet. We are close to Dry Falls. This is the place where an ice dam broke back at the end of the ice age and let loose billions of gallons of water creating one of the largest waterfalls ever created. What you can see now is the "dry falls" where the water went over the basalt cliffs. It is over 3 miles long and over a 400 foot drop. Which is three times the length and three times the drop of Niagra Falls. The water carved out a wide gorge or "coulee".

We had a fishing derby at the marina here on Banks Lake next to the campground. They put a net across an area by the docks to make it a fishing area. They stocked the water with almost 500 trout. The trout were from 1/4 pound up to over 5 pounds. The kids caught lots of fish with lots of help from the parents. After the derby they left the net in place for almost a week so the adults could enjoy the fishing too. We gave it a try but didn't have any luck -- we are not good at trout fishing even when they are trapped in small area.

We still haven't gone out on the lake fishing -- it might as well be Minnesota -- so windy and the wind is unbelievably cold. The wind is coming off of the snow in the Cascades -- brrrr.

Coulee City, Wa

We finally made it to our destination. We are in Coulee City, Wa and will be here for the summer. We have a nice campsite and can see the lake from where we sit. Those are the pictures I took. We are working here at the campground -- it's pretty easy -- make sure people pay at the self pay station and are quiet after 10PM.

We had terrible weather pretty much all the way up here. It still is pretty cool -- barely in the 50's and low 30's at night. Its been too cold and windy so far to fish but we can't wait. Walleye fishing is open year round and so is bass fishing. We have seen a few fish caught right from shore. There is a nice marina, docks and jettys here next to the campground so all we have to do is throw out a line!

We haven't done much exploring yet but we hope to get out and take some pictures of the beautiful canyons, etc around here. The campground has no WIFI so I'm now using the library. I hope to keep the blog updated every Monday.

Traveling through Utah

We left Wellton on Wednesday the 30th and spent our first night in Kingman, AZ. We followed the Colorado River up to Lake Havasu City and then went up to Kingman. We went across the new bridge by the Hoover Dam. You can't see anything of the dam or the bridge for that matter going over it. Our next stop was a little town called Leeds, UT just north of St. George. We spent two nights there so we could visit Zion National Park. The picture of the waterfall was in Zion. It is a beautiful park and they have a shuttle service to ride through the park. You can get off at a number of stops and hike around and take lots of pictures of the beautiful canyon walls and peaks.

We then drove to Provo, UT and stayed two nights to wait out some snow showers. The picture of the mountain with snow was in Provo. Provo is surrounded by mountains that still have snow on them. There is also a huge lake, Utah Lake, along the west side of town. We heard from local fishermen that it has walleyes in it. It would have been wonderful to try and fish but a little too cold for us.

We are now in Mountain Home, ID and may have to wait out some rain/snow for a day or two. I'm hoping our next post will be when we are at the campground in Coulee city, WA.