Category Archives: In Your Own Words

Astounding Facts, In Your Own Words

Wildlife videos from the Coulee

Steve Erwin, the Crocodile Hunter; Gordon Eastman; Jacques Cousteau; Nora Jenn: these are the names of great wildlife videographers.

Jenn, who lives in Coulee Dam and used to work for the National Park Service as well as the Bureau of Reclamation, films some interesting videos of animal life in our area and posts them on YouTube for all to enjoy.

One video shows a coyote howling on the ice of Banks Lake, while another shows a close-up of a young bald eagle eating a fish. Eagles trying to catch coots, an eagle swooping down close to a coyote, a hawk eating a mouse – these are just some of the other videos Jenn has filmed.

To read the full article go here and to view Jenn’s videos, go to http://www.youtube.com/couleedamsings.

Astounding Facts, How It's Done, In Your Own Words, Places to See

The inside story today at the dam

Electrical switchyard
One of the switchyards used in directing the electricity produced at Grand Coulee Dam onto the grid that powers several states.

If you’d like to glimpse the inside story of one aspect of the mission of Grand Coulee Dam, this is a good video.

The dam was originally conceived to provide irrigation to more than a million acres of potential farmland in the Columbia basin, but these days most people think of it as a huge electricity producer.

It is that, but this video, produced by the Bureau of Reclamation as a tool to help potential recruits, also provides a good overview of the basics with some spectacular footage. Watching it will help you appreciate what you see when you visit in person.

Grand Coulee Dam is the largest electrical production facility of any kind, in terms of capacity, in North America. But it doesn’t just happen magically. These folks make it happen. Watch:

In Your Own Words, Places to See

We’ve been discovered again.

We love it when you visit us!
And the view you’ve shown in your Instagram account, from the Crown Point Lookout, always inspires.

Thanks for stopping by.

InstagramCrownPoint

From Instragram: jenkrajicek    Detour to Grand Coulee Dam. This is what happens when I let Henry navigate

 

Wondering how Henry found this great viewpoint?

Below is a map. From the Visitor Center at Grand Coulee Dam, take a left to go uphill on highway 155. Continue to the intersection with highway 174 and turn right. Follow 174 until you see the sign directing you to Crown Point Overlook.

This is a state park site, and a Discover Pass is required, but the view of the dam and down river is spectacular.

MaptoCrownPoint

Astounding Facts, In Your Own Words, To Dos

What a view!

A lucky dog sniffs a great view. Ed Grenier (@roscoejefferson) photo
A lucky dog sniffs a great view. Ed Grenier (@roscoejefferson) photo

Here’s another fine use of Instagram: highlighting the great hikes the Grand Coulee Dam area offers. This shot is of a very happy dog on top of Steamboat Rock, out in the midst of Banks Lake at the Steamboat Rock State Park. It’s a hunk of earth that didn’t wash away in the series of catastrophic floods that carved the Grand Coulee at the end the last ice age.

So standing atop the rock, about 800 feet above the floor of the Grand Coulee, you can imagine the torrents that flowed through the area thousands of years ago, leaving this dramatic landscape.

The dog may not get that, but he certainly enjoys it anyway.

Astounding Facts, In Your Own Words, To Dos

People are amazed, and here’s a video to show why

People are constantly amazed by the size of the dam and the achievement of building it.
People are constantly amazed by the size of the dam and the achievement of building it.

Visitors using Instagram are always posting how amazed they are when they see Grand Coulee Dam.

“It amazes me how humans built this large, amazing structure more than 80 years ago!” wrote @lishlo this morning in a public post.

The Bureau of Reclamation has produced a top quality documentary on the building of Grand Coulee Dam to show you the amazing story behind the immense effort, the big thinking, innovation and, yes, even politics it took. If you want to visit it, you’ll appreciate it even more if you understand the whole story, so we’ll post the video here, which you can also watch on a big screen in comfortable seats at the Visitor Center when you get here.