Ice Harbor Day...

Others may think of this as Memorial Day 2014, but for us, it will always be Ice Harbor Dam(n) day.

We left Kennewick in a wicked wind at 9am.  A brief jaunt back down the Columbia to the entrance of the Snake and we motored into unknown territory.  I'd warned Glen that, even just looking at the charts, entering Ice Harbor in the spate was going to be tricky.  Made him PROMISE not to pass judgement on the Snake until AFTER we'd done this.  Good thing I did that!

It was nasty, brutish and LONG!  Within minutes of entering the Snake River, our speed dropped to below 4mph (ground speed).  As we entered the narrow channel that leads you through the shallow rocky sections, the dredged-out depths made the current run even faster.  We slowed and slowed, making most of those miles at 3 knots.

We got within view of the dam, and kept going and kept going and kept going.  The closer we got, the slower it got.  Like a calculus curve, never quite getting there.  Well, we did, but WAY slow.  After I'd called into the lockmaster that we'd be there in 30 minutes, our speed dropped to 1.6 mph.  Glen had to crank the RPMs up to 1450, near red-lining it on our poor 60-year-old diesel.  And it still took us nearly an hour just to reach the lock gates.  We were both tense, and Glen's shoulders were locked up.

Good thing we hadn't figured on going any further than Fishhook park, because we couldn't have made it any farther.  The boating above the dam was beautiful, and enough to make us want to continue, but we just needed to rest after that morning.  And rest we did.