Day 11: Wellpinit/Nespelem

This morning, we were allowed to shower and blog at the Wellpinit High School, and it was great. It was a very relaxing morning. We weren't in a huge hurry to leave, so we took our time packing up camp and loading the vans. For this leg of the trip, we are making our way to Nespelem, WA. On our way to Nespelem, we stopped in Republic, WA to search for fossils! On the way to Republic, most of us fell asleep, and when we woke up, we weren't exactly thrilled to go out in the heat and pound rocks, but it actually turned out to be really cool. In Republic, there is a place called Stonerose, that allows the public to rent tools and search an ancient lake bed for fossils. The fossils in this lake bed date from 48-50 million years old. Charlie was my partner for the fossil search, and we found one fossil, of wood. After the fossil hunt, everybody was dying for something cool to drink, and we begged Jessica to let us stop, we all loaded up on drinks and snacks at a local gas station, and then made our way to Nespelem. We finally arrived at the Nespelem Community Center (which is super nice!) and Charlie, Jayla, Monet and I decided we were sick and tired of setting up our tent, and instead wanted to just sleep under the stars, so while others were setting up tents, we were just relaxing. Thanks to a $5000 grant, we were able to go out to dinner! We headed out to Grand Coulee City and made our way to a local pizza place. Yummy :) After our delicious dinner, we headed to the largest dam in the Northwest, Coulee Dam. We we able to see the light show, which we really interesting and educational. One thing I liked about the dam show, was that it considered both benefits and damages the occurred once the construction of  Coulee began. Many tribes lost their fishing grounds and were forced to move to higher elevations to provide families with food, but on the other side of things, the dam provided power to thousands of homes, and industries. After the dam show was complete, we headed back to the community center and hit the hay.