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Spokane
...an early rising and a tornado
Washington:
May, 1997
It is five am. The dawn peace is shattered by the roar of a power lawnmower revving just metres from our tent. I leap up and rush across the damp grass of the golf green and furiously accost the fellow who is driving the infernal machine, a cigarette hanging from his lip. He tells me that he works for the state park, and that he has to mow the greens before the golfers arrive. It amazes me that the sleep of 200 or so campers is being shattered for a few bloody golfers, especially as the campground rules include a quiet time from 11pm to 7.30am. It is our worst camping experience so far!
But now, at 5.15am, we are all awake and wakeful and angry, so we decide to move on. We pack up, and drive to Lenore Lake — on the way there it begins to drizzle.
After exploring Lenore Lake we decide to head east. "The weather comes from the west," I pontificate, "so if we go east we'll stay ahead of it until we reach the rain shadow." In the grey dawn that seems plausible.
We
drive along highway 28, through tired-looking country that is yellow-grey
and rumpled like a motel sheet after sex. We join highway 2 for the second
time this trip, and head on into Spokane. The sun has come out, and I'm
feeling cheerful.
Spokane and a drive-through sex shop
In Spokane we do our city things — get colour prints developed, browse second-hand books. It's a pleasant, quiet place, without the throaty roar that so many cities have (traffic rushes by on Interstate 90, ignoring the city). It gradually becomes hot and humid.
L and I decide to have a look at a sex shop on the eastern side of town. As we drive out past rows of second-hand car lots and pawn shops the sky behind us grows yellow-black, the cloud base puckered like cellulite. A dust storm races past us, heading east, and then, just as we reach the store, the skies open and it rains fiercely and with determination for ten minutes or so. The sex shop is one of those purple nylon and giant pink penis places that are such common reminders of the general lack of sexual taste — somewhere one doesn't linger... But it had a drive through window, which we imagined was for bashful clients, but in fact was for dropping off videos without having to blush.
When we emerge the rain and wind has gone, and Spokane is settling back to a regular afternoon, plus a few puddles. But as we head north along highway 2, towards where we'd intended to camp, we come across snapped off posts and downed power lines, fallen trees, wrecked trailers. A mini-tornado has swept across the northern suburbs, cretaing a lot of damage in its wake. The rain returns, gently at first, then insistantly.
Toilets Ahoy!
We arrive at our chosen camp site, having missed it a couple of times because the signposts are confusing, only to find a locked gate bearing a notice scrawled on a piece of damp cardboard: "Closed due to flooding". I disbelievingly wander down the road to the site, to find it indeed very flooded, with picnic tables floating around and pit toilets under 2 metres of water. Hmmm.
There are some more campgrounds marked on the map, in the Kanisku National Forest. The rain has obviously settled in for the night. The road is now edged with sawdust, where trees and branches knocked down by the tornado have been recently cut and trimmed. When we get to the campground it is nearly dark. It is gloomy. A tree had just missed the campground host's trailer, and he describes how the hailstones had been so large they had to cover their van's windscreen to prevent it from being broken, and how they had hurt their knuckles as they held on to the corners of a tarapulin. After ten minutes of sitting in the gathering dusk, the rain rattling on the van, we decide to cut our losses and head for Osoyoos.
Home via Tiger
Erica steers the van through torrential rain for the next couple of hours, up to Tiger, then along highway 20 westwards. I take over at Colville, and as we head westwards in the night the rain stops. Republic, Wauconda, Tonasket are just road signs and blurry lights.
We get to Osoyoos at 1.00am, pay our $40 customs duty, and fall into bed.
Adventure Phase One had ended.
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