We woke up to another beautiful sunny morning. (Unlike back home in Northern Virginia, we have seen no appreciable rain in over 1 month while traveling through Cumberland Gap.) We headed directly to the visitor center to find out about the first tour at 10 a.m. All the tours at Grand Coulee Dam are free and on a first come basis. The visitor center has many interesting and informative exhibits. The dam was built between 1933 and 1941 and has multiple benefits. Construction provided work and hope during the depression. The dam is the largest concrete structure in North America and one of the largest in the world. It is 550 feet tall, 500 feet wide, and nearly one mile long. It is truly an impressive structure. The main reservoir for the dam is Lake Roosevelt. It is 151 miles long and goes all the way to Canada.

Grand Coulee Dam serves 4 main purposes: flood control, electric power generation, water for irrigation and recreation. The dam has a generating capacity of 6,800 megawatts and produces an average of 21 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually. 12 huge pumps lift water from Lake Roosevelt 280 feet to Banks Lake where it is used to supply water for approximately 670,000 acres of farm land. Six of the pumps can lift 1,600 cubic feet of water per second and the other six can pump 2,000 cubic feet of water per second.

 After touring the dam, we had breakfast on an outdoor patio looking out at the dam. After breakfast, it was time to continue our journey. We crossed back into Canada after about 4 hours traveling on US 395. We went from wheat and canola fields to forest. I have now traveled the full length of US 395 from the Mexican border (before Interstate 15 was built) to the Canadian border. As usual, the views along the way were spectacular.

Reaching Castlegar, BC, we had a light dinner and settled into a very comfortable Super 8 room with excellent space to catch up on the blog. I managed to catch up 3 days of blogging before giving up and tucking in for the night.