In the summer of 1981, just before we went to England, we did a trip up to the Kootenays, and then went down to Idaho to buy a guitar, and then back via Grand Coulee, Spokane, Wenatchee and then up the I-5 to the border.

This is the G-Man and his mum, reading up about the dam, prior to looking at it, presumably so you understand what you're seeing.

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So-called because it has the profile of an old-time steamboat, with the raked prow, but also because Steamboat Rock is actually an island just down from the dam, surrounded by water (which you can't see in this shot). Note that the roads of eastern Washington were a lot less crowded in 1981 than they are today.

Update, Aug 2013: I have reconsidered the colour density and contrast, and sharpened the shot just a tiny bit.

Tags:   Steamboat rock Washington 1981 desert

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As you can see from the blurred foreground, this one was taken from the window of the car (a green VW Rabbit which I was sorry to have to sell) whiles it was moving. I don't know what causes dust devils, I just know we saw a lot of them that afternoon. Apparently, they are something of a feature of the local geography. I've processed the shot so as to try and make the tall plume of the central DD a bit more visible. In a still shot like this, they don't look like much, but in motion, and closer up, they are quite impressive, like this one, which reaches up several hundred feet into the air, all moving and whirling and shimmering. If you look at the larger version of the shot, you should be able to spot five of the DDs. Some of them only lasted for a few seconds, others would stay, wobbling on their axis and meandering across the field, for as long as we could keep them in view.

The dam means that there can be agriculture in this area, but it isn't "naturally" adapted to growing. It's more like scrub desert, with tough little plants that might feed goats, but little else. The dam was built for power, primarily, but it's also allowed for irrigation on a giant scale. One wonders what the soil productivity will be like in another fifty years.

Tags:   Dust devils Washington desert 1981 mountains

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If memory can be relied upon, this is below the dam, on the way over to Spokane (though still a long ways away; we didn't get to our campground outside Spokane until suppertime). What the picture doesn't show is just how hot it was. This is desert country, and on this July day, the temperature was over 100F. Every time we stopped the car to take a picture, we just baked.

Tags:   desert 1981 washington mountains

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