Kamloops, BC, Canada to Othello, Washington, USA, August 29, 2009

We left the Walmart in Kamloops, British Columbia via route 97 in Canada heading east and then south. It was a very scenic road.

This is an old log cabin just south of Kamloops.

This is an old wooden barn with some tractors parked in the front.

This is a scene near Monte, British Columbia.

Another old barn near a modern field which is irrigated. This is a contrast between old and new.

This is a little old church. Note the spot on the winshield, in the photo, which is from a bug! :-)

I know, I know! I love old barns & houses almost as much as lighthouses! :-)

This is a Falkland street scene going now southeast toward Vernon, BC. These are very small little towns.

A lake scene coming into Vernon, BC. This is the beginning of a series of lakes connected by a river all the way south to the USA. It is very beautiful.

The next big town south of Vernon is Kelowna. This sign was beautiful with all the flowers out front.

We saw joggers near the river and tube floaters on the river as we traveled south from Kelowna. It was nice to see the people enjoying the recreational activities on a beautiful day!

Here the road turns at the end of the lake near Okanagan Falls, getting very near the U.S boarder. These cliffs were interesting.

From here south, we saw lots of vineyards. We are still in British Columbia, but wondered if this was similar to Italy's vineyards.

I don't think we were supposed to see these small houses for migrant workers because we only got a short glimpse since they were behind tall fences. This is the last scene we have from Canada. We continued south on Rt 97 to Rt 17 which we found just south of Monse in Washington State.

Although hard to see, the distant structure is Chief Joseph Dam, just west of the Grand Coulee Dam.

An abandoned ranch on south Rt 17, south of Chief Joseph's Dam. Can you imagine trying to make a living here for your family?

On the south end of Banks Lake, which has the Grand Coulee Dam at the north end, is this unusual dry falls. It is at the intesection of east west Rt 2 & south Rt 19. During the last ice age an ice dam would form in Montana, daming up a huge lake. Eventually this ice dam would break and the water would rush through here, making the largest waterfall the the earth has ever had. The water flow was larger than all the rivers in the world put together. This water eventually went down the Columbia River Canyon. Hard to believe.

This is what the dry falls might have looked like about 13,000 years ago!

This is the way it looks today, very "water worn" although it is located in a very dry area of Washington. Shortly after this Dry Falls area, we went through a small town where they had a town RV dump and available water for our fill-up. That was very nice.

This is our RV and Jeep parked at Dry Falls. You can see that this is a dry desert-like area.

This is a view of Soap Lake, just north of Ephrata, Washington.

This is another view of the road & Soap Lake.

This was a very interesting rock wall at the end of Soap Lake. We arrived in Othello, Washington by evening and stayed in the parking lot of their local Walmart. The next day was Sunday, so we attended church in Othello. We were introduced to Sister Andersen and several others who were so excited to pick our brains on genealogy. They were trying hard to get a genealogy class going but the class members were not present that Sunday, so we were able to help them with several new concepts, webpages, etc. Sister Andersen kindly asked us to dinner at her home after church! I felt like Sister Andersen and I were "kindred Spirits"; we got along so well. What a treat it was to be able to help the Othello Ward a little!