Pulling Back the Clouds for Grand Coulee

Image1 Spent four gray days in Grand Coulee waiting for the clouds to part.  If you are a lover of dams and amazing feats of concrete, then I highly recommend the trip.  However, I would say go in summer, when the place might actually be open and they put on (or so I was told, having not seen it myself) a laser light show!  I got the call around early November and so saw mostly rain and shops that said 'closed.'  The story was for the New York Times travel section, all about Wood Guthrie.  At the time I didn't realize that his Columbia River Collection, which contains many of his most well known tunes, including 'Grand Coulee Dam,' was actually commissioned by the Bonneville Power Administration as propaganda!  So he and I were both creative types working for the man when we made the trip to the 'Eighth Wonder of the World.'  Him to write songs and me to document the town and his memory, immortalized in a rather off putting statue.

Cruised the town, making friends and crashing pancake breakfasts and finally, on the fourth day, the clouds parted and the light got nice and somewhere, Woody Guthrie chuckled a bit at both of us.20131109_Guthrie_024 20131110_Guthrie_084