The Good and Bad of Coulee City

We have enjoyed some unexpected fun among the coulees here in central Washington. We are in a shaded camping spot at Coulee City Community Park on the shores of the crystal clear Banks Lake. This is a first-come-first-served campground, so we can stay here as long as we want and are willing to pay their $30 per night fee. That is the good part of Coulee City.

But the bad part is their 30-amp electrical hook-up is one of the weakest we have found, so we are having to be careful about our power usage. That is tricky when we need to wash ten days of laundry plus run the air-conditioner during 90-degree weather.

Another good thing is our neighbors here at the park. Mark helped the young family camped beside us on their maiden voyage in their used trailer. Paul didn't know how to hook-up the sewer hose (or where it was), and Mark also gave him an o-ring to keep their water hose from leaking. As we got to know Paul and his family better, we came to find an interesting thing about many of the people that vacation here at Coulee City. Our camping neighbors on both sides immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine as adults. The two families didn't know each other, but both live in the Seattle area. They both speak their native language at home and attend Pentecostal churches where the sermon is not in English. They invited us to come join them for church the next time we were in Seattle. One family immigrated ten years ago, the other 25 years ago. All this prompted discussions about moving to a new country, and lessons about the geography and culture of Ukraine. We accidentally learn such interesting things in our travels!

We plan to move on, but we had one more hike we wanted to take. So we drove the 15 miles to the Northrop Canyon trail head. Nestled in the canyon with tall coulee walls on both sides, we had read good things about this hike.

We were enjoying a day with high temperatures in the 80's, and we started early (for us) in the morning to beat the heat.

But less than a quarter-mile down the trail we came upon a shaded section with a flock of mosquitoes intent on taking blood samples. We fogged on the insect repellent and pressed on.

We noticed that the trail was not maintained, with increasingly tall weeds. One of us was ready to turn around when she was wading through shoulder-tall weeds along a narrowing path. 

Denisa didn't like this narrow trail even when the weeds had little white flowers on the top.

We could rarely see the ground because the weeds were so thick. It was one of those rare ground sightings that Mark saw a snake cross the trail right in front of him. Denisa finally insisted that it was time to turn around!

That's when we figured out we had missed a turn of the trail that was hidden because of all the tall weeds. We continued a little further along the rocky path beside the canyon wall. The picture below would be really interesting to a geologist. It shows the different lava layers from different volcanic eruptions. We don't want to get too scientific here, but the budding geologist in us has to point out the squiggly curly formations above the straight columns.

Stumbling through the layers of scree, Mark spotted a sure-footed marmot quite at home among the rocks.

He found two more on top of the rock pile, looking at something more interesting than Mark and his camera.

In the distance we finally caught a glimpse of the abandoned Northrop family home in the valley. But the buggy, weedy, sweaty hike just wasn't any fun. 

As we headed back towards the car, we decided the only good part of this trail were the marmots. We spotted one more along the trail, looking very wise and thoughtful.

Back at the trail head, we decided to give the other trail in the area a chance. The stage coach trail went steadily up-hill, with steadily better views above the valley.

As we climbed to higher elevations, we could now look down on Banks Lake. That island in the lake in the background is Steamboat Rock, where we hiked a couple days ago.

Denisa had announced that if she saw one more weedy section or one more snake, she was giving up on this trail and heading back to the car. Sure enough, we saw another snake slithering across the trail. 

This guy wasn't a scary poisonous snake, but he certainly wasn't as warm and fuzzy as a cute little marmot.

We also heard a distinct rattle but didn't see that snake. On the other trail, we wonder just how many snakes we had passed in the tall weeds without knowing it.

Of all the beautiful and fun hikes we get to enjoy, some times we find a bummer hike like in Northrop Canyon. Mrs. Northrop was murdered in the wash room of the family house, so it sounds like she didn't have a great time here either.

We did find another good part of Coulee City--the paved memorial trail that starts right at our campground and winds along the shore of Banks Lake. The second time we took the trail, we got in a goose traffic jam.

The trail led to openings to watch the sunset over the lake. 

After four days at Coulee City Community Park, we have discovered the good and bad of this area. But we feel blessed to see and experience new things in new places, and we are ready to move down the road to more adventures.