PNC Days 87-89 – Back in the USA

We crossed the border into the USA and soon after made it to the 130 mile Lake Roosevelt, featuring bluffs and beautiful white sand beaches. The landscape has transformed into rolling mountains with dry pine forests. We paddled through Collville, Sinixt & Ktunaxa ɁamakɁis ancestral lands.

Day 87 – CR Mile 500.1 – Hello USA, goodbye Canada

We slept in a bit this morning because the port of entry into the USA didn’t open until 9 am. We only had 7 miles from camp to the border, and we were able to do 7 mph with the current. We had a visitor as we were getting ready in the tent. A big black bear was curious about us, but it ran away pretty quickly after Tim yelled grab your bear spray and camera. We always make sure to store our food in a bear safe way overnight, especially in the front country and near towns where bears are more likely to have learned that people have food. We were camped on the other side of the river from the outskirts of Trail, BC.

We crossed into the USA on the river and then walked up to the customs building. Tim called this customs station back in April or May, and that’s what the person he talked to said to do. They were super confused about what to do with us today though. It turns out they don’t process “pleasure” boats at this station, so we weren’t supposed to enter the USA via the Columbia River at all. They had us go get our canoe and bring it up. Then we had to portage the canoe farther up the road. At one point while we were waiting at customs, a car rolled down it’s window to chat with us. They had seen us camping on the river across from their house and wondered what we were up to. We explained how we had wanted to camp at the municipal park last night but that the water was really turbulent and quick moving, so we accidentally missed it and that it was getting too dark to continue. They didn’t seem to care and figured we were up to something cool—they had been looking at us across the river with binoculars and said probably all of their neighbors were too.

As we were walking the road with our canoe wondering where to put in again, we passed an under-construction store that we had stopped at during our hike! We stopped in again and said hi to Wayne and Candy. They fed us chili and some other treats, and we had fun chatting for awhile. They also told us where to put the canoe back in. Such nice people!

After a short canoe, we to a long break at the Northport boat landing to charge our phones and power banks (since we never made it to the municipal park last night). Shortly after heading back out on the river was “Little Dallas”, a narrow canyon with big whirlpools. We had to paddle hard, but we made it through just fine. We think that was the last tricky spot after two fun days of quick moving water, rapids, whirlpools, and waves. -R

Day 88 – CR Mile 539.7 – Lake Roosevelt

Lake Roosevelt is a loooong lake. Early-ish in the morning we passed milepost 110… that meant we had 110 miles to go until the Grand Coulee Dam and no current basically the whole way (we did have a very slow current until about 100 miles out, but it’s long gone now). Forward progress depends on our muscles, or when we’re lucky our muscles plus a tail wind. That said, we did both examine our biceps last night and notice visible increases since the start of the trip, especially for me. Makes sense — we are essentially using a “rowing machine” for 11-12 hours a day!

We met a fisherman this morning with two nice walleye (lucky!) and chatted with him for a bit. He told us that the original Hudson Bay factory was nearby, but that it’s been underwater since the 1930’s. Apparently when the lake is extremely low you can see the factory again. We also talked about the now-submerged Kettle Falls, which was an important fishing location for Native Americans. As we paddled on we pondered the dramatic changes to the landscape, wildlife, and to people’s lives that are caused by the construction of a dam and lake so big.

The lake was lined with beautiful sandy beaches all day. We napped and had lunch on one of them. We also went swimming at lunch. Perfect. We paddled on to another sandy beach for dinner and set up camp. We are near a road so there is plenty of sign of human activity. There are footprints and pistachio shells in the sand around our tent. Let’s hope bears don’t like pistachios! For dinner we had salsa beans and rice. Yum! -T

Day 89 – CR Mile 578.2 – White sand beaches

We continued paddling down Lake Roosevelt. There was a bit of smoke in the air for a lot of the day, but other than that the weather was great with a slight tailwind. We enjoyed both a coffee break and a lunch break on two of the endless beautiful white sand beaches lining the lake. This evening we ended up close to the confluence of the Spokane and Columbia rivers with lots of noisy boaters having fun out on the water. -R