Heading to the Grand Coulee Dam, we hum along in our ’61 VW Camper driving across the dry land area of Big Bend, past the combination of dry land and irrigated farming and into some rather desolate country side. From one view, it appears to be a giant deep cut through the landscape.

We cross over a dry river bed. This is the ‘Grand Coulee’ — an ancient river bed formed 10,000-15,000 years ago during the Missoula Floods and left dry when the river found it’s present course creating a ‘big bend’ away from the Grand Coulee–hence, the Big Bend dry land farm area.

With lava canyon edges and ridges,  scruffy sagebrush and tumbleweeds, it looks similar to the area around the Snake River Canyon in southern Idaho.  We cross over a dry river bed.

Rounding a corner a ribbon of water  looking  inviting in this rugged country. We are back to the Columbia River!  This is a fun drive in our VW Bus around the curves and along the water.

We keep on moving up the river (actually Banks Lake formed by a low earthen dam below the massive Grand Coulee Dam)  past beautiful flat water that makes us want to get out on a ski and ride for miles; and past the impressive Steamboat Rock, once an island in the Columbia River bed and a long-established landmark used by nomadic Native Americans and early settlers.  Almost no boats are on the water–one stretch of 7 or 8 miles and not a single boat.

Even when we get to the “populated” area there is only a handful of boats in the water. This is once more,  another place on the beautiful Columbia River we would like to return to — next time with our water skis and maybe a boat, behind a ’61 Westy???  Why not!