Apples and the border.

I will combine two days into one blog and so there will be a few more photos than usual. 

Donna and I wanted to take Ashley over to the Sherman Creek Orchard which is now in full production. They have ten or more types of apples and a few pear products as well.

This is one of the reasons for our trip to the apple orchard, besides showing it to Ashley.  The orchard sells damaged apples for 20 cents a pound which we load up for these guys. Now, after a few weeks of training, if they are within ear shot when I go out the back patio and say with a low voice..."hey now, how are you doing" they actually run into the yard for apple treats.

We were here just two weeks ago and at that time the trees were very green...a lot has changed in just 14 days.

It day was cold but the girls had fun running around the beautiful apple trees.

Once we got into the warehouse Ashley was like, "I want this one, and this one and maybe a few of these too"!

The next day Donna and I took a trip up the Pend Oreille River where it crosses the Canadian border, but first stopped to check on the motorhome. We found a shed with electricity across the valley to store the home for the unforeseeable future.

The North Pend Oreille Scenic Byway starts near the town of Tiger, Washington...about 30 miles east of Colville.

On the way to the byway we came upon Crystal Falls on highway 20. I found a 2 gig photo card in it's protective cover on a rock. When I got home I looked at it and found that some guy from Washington Department of Transportation had a letter on the photo card with a phone number. He was so happy that we found the card and came right over to retrieve it.

Box Canyon Dam was our next stop. I quickly found out what is a "run of the river" dam. In other information plaques we found that Box Canyon was an extremely dangerous rapid to run in the 1900's.

This plant, that has no storage capacity and still generates 60 megawatts of power... just by having the river flow thru the turbines. 

I thought this 1910 railroad bridge across the Pend Oreille River  upstream from the dam was awesome.

There are 4 of these "propeller turbines" bad boys in the Box Canyon Dam pumping out the 60 megawatts.

Our next stop down river was the town of Metaline Falls, Washington. This was a neat old hotel that caught my eye. I looked it up and it is the "#1 hotel" in Metaline Falls by tripadvisor...out of 1 :-)

Heading into "Cathy's Cafe" for lunch in Metaline Falls. I would give you the link but it's a Facebook link and I don't do....Facebook!

What a neat old movie theater in downtown Metaline Falls. Like every other small town theater, in any town we have visited lately...the movie Gravity was the main attraction.

My younger brother would kill to be able to walk through history like this and other old decommissioned power houses I have only seen from the outside. The Sullivan Creek Power House that was built in 1910 but does not have a great position on the internet that I could research.

Nelway, BC is the entry point here into Canada. We decided not to cross today because it was already 2:30 in the afternoon and I really don't like driving in this part of the country after sundown.

"Honey, I can see Canada!" We stopped at the Boundary Dam overlook but could not photograph the dam because of lighting problems. The river below flows across the border into Canada for a few miles until it meets the mighty Columbia 500 yards above the US border.

This is the only photo I could get without the sun blinding me. I believe these 6 tubes are the outlets for tubines. This "youtube" video may explain it more.

The dam at Sullivan Lake feeds into Pend Oreille River which is an "oldie but goodie" and the water seemed to be drawn down quite a bit for the winter season.

The fall season beauty of the area can be so overwhelming, that around every corner seems to offer a better palette for your paint than the one before.

Most of the fall color here is from the tamarack trees. I was going nuts because the tamarack looks like a pine, has needles like a pine and a cone like a pine...but is not a pine tree. It is a deciduous conifer that drops its needles like leaves in the fall. The roads up here are covered in a gold velvet cushion from the tamarack.