Portland to Glacier NP

Well, I made it to Glacier National Park. The general store here only sells 6 packs of beer (“No Exceptions!” says the sign). Fortunately (Uh… unfortunately?), I don’t feel like getting tanked or wasting beer so this entry is going to be fairly lucid.

I left Portland a bit late after getting a really good night sleep and taking my time in getting ready. It was a good stay and I don’t think I really wanted to leave. On my way out of town I picked up a cranberry hazelnut (not walnut) scone (Oooh that hazelnut’s good!) at Grand Central Bakery. That thing was monstrous in taste and stature. It was so large I didn’t even finish it until I got to Multnamah Falls (conveniently located right off of I-84):


That thing is big too.

After the falls it was time to see some fish and big engineering at the Bonneville Dam. The Bonneville Damn lies across the Columbia, the second largest river in America. To allow fish to run up stream and spawn, they built a fish ladder:



And a funky looking fish maze:



They have a viewing room that allows you to spy on the fish as they make their way up the ladder. This year’s run was exceptionally large (and incredibly hard to photograph).



I love big engineering projects so when I realized I was 10 minutes late for the tour of the power generation plant, I sprinted down five flights of stairs and caught up with the group as they wandered over to power generation station 1.



The Bonneville Dam was originally conceived as having 2 generators and 2 technicians dressed as butlers as their early concept art shows.



However, when they realized the dam was to be built in Oregon and not 1730’s Rococo France, the design was changed a bit. As energy demands grew, more turbines and generators were added to the site. Currently they have 10 massive generators in station 1 and a bunch more in station 2:



This allows them to supply 1000 megawatts of renewable power. That’s enough to power a city of 500,000 people.

Legend has it that the early 1940s, the site was expanded by 4 generators in order to supply power to the plutonium manufacturing facilities of the Manhattan Project in Washington State.

The tour concluded with a non-technical but hilarious prop scholar/comedy explanation of hydroelectric power generation. I was the turbine.



From there I was off along the Columbia at high speed (yep, there were trains along the road too)

The Columbia is big.

Real big.

Once I left the Columbia, the drive to Spokane was pleasant, leaving the dry, rolling plains in favor of trees, hills and meadows. The town of Spokane is really quite nice. The downtown has an old factory feel and as you leave town on HW-2 you pass by an awesome antique shop with all the junk I’ve ever wanted but never had the space for.


The sun set on my way out of Spokane so I completely missed all of Idaho and the entrance into Montana. I regret that because, from what I could see with my hi-beams on, it’s a beautiful drive.

Since I set up camp in the dark, I awoke to find that I had entered Pancake Country!



Montana, the land of tah-dah.



And log trucks…



There are lots of those. They go slow.

Finally, after about a week on the road, I made it to my first major destination: Glacier National Park. It’s really pretty here.