Sunday, June 21, 2009
CFR - Day 8
Sunday dawned bright but cloudy in Nakusp. I headed south towards Castlegar, and stopped there for coffee and donuts at the Tim Horton's. You can't visit Canada without at least one stop at Tim Horton's, can you?
Heading west on Hwy 3 caused me to meet the approaching storm head on. I rode through the rain for a few miles before I stopped in the parking lot of a provincial park to put on my rain gear — better late than never. It rained off and on the rest of day.
I stayed on Hwy 3 to Hwy 41, and crossed the border at Danville. The woman at the guard station was quite nice — I pulled away early to clear the spot for the next car in line, and was about to drive away with my sunglasses laying on top of my tail bag when she called to me to stop, then walked out and handed me my glasses. Very cool.
WA-21 was pretty nice. The northern section was mostly in dense trees, but it opened up some the further south I went. I intended to go west on Manilla Creek Road over to the Grand Coulee Dam, but once I got there the road didn't look all the appealing, so I stayed on Hwy 21 to the Wilbur-Kelly ferry over the reservoir. The ferry was tiny - three cars at the most, plus a motorcycle or two.
Hwy 21 south of the ferry was a pretty cool motorcycling road, climbing up into the mountains, then back down to the flats. I headed west on US-2, and stopped at the Rainbow Falls Dam.
Hwy 17 took me south, and I stopped at what I thought was the North Scootenay Dike Dam. After I got back, I checked on things and realized that I had stopped at a little flood control dam instead of at the actual Dam Tour dam. Since I was within half a mile or so, the nice lady at the Dam Tour gave me credit for it, but I'm going to try to make it back there in August to get the real deal.
The Motel 6 in Richland, WA is on the bottom half of the Motel 6 desirability scale. For dinner I went across the street to Zips, a poor imitation of Lucky Boys.
406 miles.
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Dry Falls Dam
North Scooteney Dike Dam