TWO PEAS AND THE POD: ❎#71-DAMN THAT'S A BIG DAM! (ID)

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We have a fairly long travel day ahead of us so we got an early start around 8:00AM. First we had to travel some 23-miles south on WA-25 back to the town of Davenport, you know, the one with the wonderful laundromat.

Then we traveled 33-miles east on US-2 towards the big city of Spokane, WA. Thankfully, just before we got to the city limits we turned south again and spent the next 100-miles traveling on US-195 through the wheat producing region of Washington.

This high plateau region, known as the Palouse Area, is perfect for wheat production.

Pretty much everywhere you looked it was nothing but wheat fields.

I guess there were a few patches of green.

This abandoned grainery has seen better days.
I hope it doesn't block the road when it eventually collapses.

After a stop for lunch in the medium sized town of Pullman, WA, we continued south until we arrived at the Washington/Idaho border outside of Lewiston, ID. Next it was time to head east again, this time on US-12, where we followed the Clearwater River for a distance of 40-miles to the town of Orofino.

Here we left the river behind and began a 20-mile white-knuckle drive "UP" to our campground along a winding, twisting, hair-pin turn of a rollercoaster ride through the beautiful countryside.

Not quite a waterfront site, but I can see the water while sitting in THE POD.

Notice the insect catchers hanging from the pavillion.
Those are for the numerous Yellow Jacket Wasps and flies around here.

I don't care! I'm done driving for the day and I'm just going to enjoy the view.

TUESDAY - Now that I've recovered from yesterday's drive I'm ready to once again get behind the wheel, this time without the 7,500 pounds of THE POD pushing and pulling ROVER and us around every corner.

Last week when I began mapping out our route to arrive at this campground I thought we would be traveling through the small town of Elk River, located just 22-miles north of the campground. So I went online and scheduled our mail to be forwarded to the small Post Office located there.

Then the night before we travel I usually finalize our route by doing a more in depth review of the route.

That's when I found a review that basically stated that while the route that approaches the campground from the south is a winding, twisting, hair-pin turn of a rollercoaster ride at least it is almost completely paved surfaces.

The road that approaches the campground from the north is just as much of a winding, twisting, hair-pin turn of a rollercoaster ride, but it is almost entirely made up of loose gravel that must be driven with extreme caution around the tight downhill curves.

Today we are going to go pickup our mail in Elk River and check out the Dworshak Dam that creates this wonderful resevoir we are camping on. We will be traveling in a 113-mile circular route that will take us back down the south side of the reservior, past the dam and then arrive in Elk River where we will pickup our mail, have lunch and then travel the northern route back to the campground.

Since it's a long drive we once again got an early start. Upon opening the front door we got a quick video of our "every morning" visitors.

I wonder if these guys are aware there are campers in this park with guns? I've seen them!

An early morning view of the day use area from our campsite.

It should be a wonderful day once this fog burns off.

The Dent Bridge over the Dent Reservoir.

Another view after negotiating a few switchbacks in the roadway.

We made it safely down to the town of Orofino and then headed for the Dworshak Dam site. Between the holiday weekends of Memorial Day and Labor Day they offer tours of the inside of the dam to explain how everything works. As usual we were too late in the season to take advantage of that!

We did however spend a good amount of time exploring around inside of the Visitor Center and met one of the managers working there today. We had a long conversation with Paul about our travels to Alaska this summer and were told that he will be retiring on New Years Eve and begin his travels with his wife.

We exchanged contact cards and was delighted when I saw he signed up for our Facebook Group. Welcome aboard Paul!

The Dworshak Dam at 717 feet is the third tallest dam in the entire U.S.
Only the Oroville Dam in California and the Hoover Dam on the AZ/NV border are taller.

This bearing had to be replaced from one of the turbines.

The water levels on the back side of the dam appeared to be very low.

That's a lot of concrete!

We arrived at the Post Office in Elk River just as they opened at 11:30AM. It took all of two minutes for her to locate my General Delivery envelope and sign it over to me. Then we headed across the street to have lunch at the Huk's Restaurant inside of the Elk River Lodge and General Store.

Huk's is short for Huckleberry, you know like Huckleberry Hound or Huckleberry Finn, only in this case it's just plain Huckleberry. These are abundant in this region and they have everything you could possibly flavor with Huckleberry's on sale in the General Store.

We picked up some Huckleberry Honey and Huckleberry Marmalade to try, while enjoying our new Huckleberry Candle.

The restaurant menu featured many Huckleberry items to chose from and I got a Cheeseburger with Huckleberry BBQ sauce on it, a Huckleberry Pie Shake and Tricia got a slice of Huckleberry Pie with Huckleberry Ice Cream. It was all delicious and not a scrap left on the plate when we were through.

After lunch we went next door to the library to update the website and begin preparing this blog post. We were there for several hours and only left when they closed at 5:00PM. We were told the Wifi is left on at night and is accessible from the parking lot, but I'd had enough and wanted to get back home so I didn't have to travel those 20+ miles of gravel roads in the dark.

Sadly we didn't think to take one single photo of anything while we were in town.

We did however take these two photos while on the gravel roads headed home. We must have seen a dozen or more trucks hauling logs going the other direction while on this road. Further down the road we saw where they were getting all those logs from.