Tuesday, June 02, 2009

As we wake up in Walla Walla and get ready for breakfast, I am still chuckling about a rest stop incident yesterday. We had stopped along the Columbia River to stretch our legs when a van of elderly ladies drove up ... six of them ... think about the ladies in the movie Calendar Girls. They were smiling and laughing and generally having a good time. At their request my daughter snapped a photo of all six with one of their cameras. At that moment, I strode over behind them, stood with three ladies on my right, three on my left, wrapped my arms around them and smiled while my daughter took another photo. Me in my full riding gear, including helmet, ... the ladies loved it! I have a feeling they’ll talk about it for some time.

We enjoyed the Breakfast Buffet at the Marcus Whitman and thusly fueled, headed toward Grand Coulee Dam. Being the road less traveled our first intermediate stop was Waitsburg. Another charming town that time forgot.
Home to the WHOOPemUP Cafe and other delights.

Our route took us in turn to Starbuck (no coffee), Delaney, Chard, Dodge (as in get the heck out of Dodge), Central Ferry (where there is no ferry), Dusty (a town we rode through but none of us remember), and St. John. At St John we had lunch at the Rialto. At the suggestion of the waitress we sat at the counter so she wouldn’t have to carry our food very far and chatted with her. She was born here, got married and moved to Rosalia, had a couple of kids and moved back. The way she said Rosalia, it was as though it was the big city and we should all know about it. None of us surrendered to the momentum of curiosity to ask where it was. No need to as it would turn out.

Leaving St. John, we got lost and rode through Rosalia by mistake.

We paid for our (er, my) navigation mistake with brutally straight roads from Rosalia all the way to Coulee Dam.

At Coulee Dam, we found out it was possible to be bristled at …

... but before the bristling, here are three more photos from Waitsburg.

We rolled into Coulee Dam, checked into the Columbia River Inn, a biker friendly spot if I’ve ever seen one, and decided to take a walk across the Dam. As we approached the Dam, we could see a big barrier across the roadway with a guard shack nearby. We strode up to it to ask if you could walk/drive across it. The guard in his black uniform showing a shiny side arm, fairly bristled, all quivery, all attitude, and said “First do you have a Bureau ID allowing you to be here?!!”

Now those of you who know me know that my first reaction was to go for laughs. I remembered I had ID from the Drivers License Bureau. I sometimes keep my wallet in the Bureau drawer. Time seemed to stand still while several other possible responses came to mind. The bristle cone guard got even more bristly (in case that’s a real word), time resumed its normal pace, and I said, “No.”

The guard then pointed to the way we had come in and fairly yelled, “Then you need to get back over there, NOW!!! You got a problem with that? See the NAV!” Not knowing what Norton Antivirus had to do with it, we left.

We walked around, took some pictures of the dam, had dinner at The Melody and called it a day.

History buffs, Grand Coulee Dam was built during the first half of the last century and commissioned in 1950 by President Truman. 1950 was the year I was born, how about that? You can see the text of his dedication speech here: www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=13485

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Motorcycles
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