Learning to Live Life...De Die in Diem

Jun. 26, 2006

What I have been up to part 1...

Wow!! It has been a long time since I last blogged! I’ve just been taking a much needed mental break. I have been keeping busy though. LOL! I thought updating with some pictures might be fun. Over the next few days or so I will be adding pictures and posts about what we have been up to, and will be up to. They will include things like, repurposing furniture, jewelry making, and gardening to name a few.

We recently took a day trip to the Grand Coulee Dam. That was a sight to behold! The Grand Coulee Dam is not nearly as tall as the Hoover Dam; however it is the heaviest concrete structure in all of the United States. It has approximately 12 million cubic tons of concrete!! It is the 3^rd largest producer of electricity in the world! The dam itself is about 1 mile across. Your eyes can barely distinguish the mass of this dam. It is incredible that this structure was built in the 30’s. Besides the awesomeness of the Grand Coulee, just past the spill-way we saw 2 bald eagles perched up on an old telephone poll. They were beautiful!! We also spotted their nest on the other side of the dam. Now that was a nest! During our picnic on the lawn in front of the spill-way they turned the spill-way off to just a tiny trickle. We were very disappointed until we learned that they have actually only turned it on full power during the day, 4 times since 1990!! YAY! Praise you Lord. What a blessing!! During a brief thunderstorm while we were there, we stopped in the newly remodeled visitor center. I didn’t take any pictures of that, however I will next time. We had the opportunity to chat with a local Native American from the Colville Confederated Tribes. His particular family was Nez Perce and Palouse. This gentle man was a speaker and an artist. He shared really great info with us about his family’s means of communication and identification. There is no written language for his people, so everything was/is spoken. There is a very nice museum that we will visit the next time we go all about the Confederated Tribes. The tots were tired so we decided to head home and skip the museum. However, we snapped a picture of a Teepee that various Confederated Tribes might have used. Hopefully we can go back soon and absorb even more of the culture, and beautiful natural surroundings.

~Renee~

Notice the tiny cars below...