We had cooler weather for our final days in Winthrop. The temperature topped out at 77 degrees on Wednesday and was slightly warmer on Thursday. We took a drive in Midget-San up to Twin Lakes on Wednesday. We wanted to look at the Big Twin RV Park. It looks like a nice place – spacious and right on Big Twin Lake. The lake is stocked with trout and has easy access for the kayak. We’ll keep this place in mind for the future.

We like Pine Near RV Park in Winthrop, but really the main reason was the easy access to town. It’s on Castle Street, on a bluff overlooking Riverside Avenue (WA20) which is the main street in town. In the past we were able to walk through the Shaefer Museum property and take the stairs in back down to Riverside Avenue. With the pandemic, Shaefer Museum is closed and the entrance is locked.

Donna and I took a walk through Pine Near and checked out one of the teepees they rent. They have three teepees and a couple of rental cabins.

The sign in front of one teepee said “Come on in” the other one said “Do not disturb.” So we looked inside the one with the welcoming sign.

There were three futons inside. It’s an interesting idea and maybe it would be fun for camping with children – not really my cup of tea though.

Donna prepared fish poached in tomatoes, saffron and white wine for dinner. She bought wild Alaskan cod at the Skagit Valley Food Co-op in Mount Vernon and it was delicious. It must have been cut from a large cod because the meat consisted of large flakes.

Thursday we drove to Twisp and took a look around. As expected, most of it was closed. We also checked out another RV park called Riverbend RV Park. This park is located right on the Methow (met-HOW) River. Most of the sites are meant to be pulled into nose first with a view of the river. They had a few sites that would be long enough for us without dropping the trailer. It’s another place we’ll keep in mind for the next time we’re up this way.

Donna took a bicycle ride Thursday and did a loop. She went out on West Chewuch Road – it’s west of the Chewuch River. This is another interesting and hard to pronounce name. It was once spelled Chewak – from 1904 to 1960. Then the official spelling was changed to Chewack. In 1987, the spelling changed again to Chewuch. The second syllable doesn’t have a ch sound like the word “such”. It’s more of an “ack” sound.

She crossed the river well north of town and hit Eastside Chewuch Road.

Her route back to town took her past Pearrygin State Park. She stopped and shot a photo of a doe and her fawn.

I played around with my ham radio – I’m really enjoying the 20-meter band. I’ve made several long distance contacts – Alaska, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Ohio, New York, Michigan and on Thursday evening, I picked up on a conversation between a ham operator in Costa Rica and a guy in Alaska. My signal wasn’t strong enough to reach the guy in Costa Rica, but he had a powerful transmitter and I could clearly hear him!

I had a conversation with a guy in the Navajo Nation. He had a special event call sign of N7C. The event he was promoting was National Code Talkers Day. The Code Talkers of World War Two were vital to the US in the Pacific theater. They devised a code that couldn’t be broken. They were all Navajo and used their language as the basis for their code.

The way it worked was, they used a Navajo word that would be translated to English. The first letter of the English word would represent the letter of the code. For eample, if they wanted to say the letter “A”, they had three ways to do it. They could say wol-la-chee which translates to ant, or they could say be-la-sana which translates to apple, or they could say tse-nil which translates to axe. Any one of these three words would represent the letter “A”.

So, this guy – his name was Herb – was in the Navajo Nation, west of Shiprock, New Mexico. I think he was near Teec Nos Pos which is just west of the Arizona-New Mexico border. He was trying get as many contacts as he could to direct people to a special website for the event. I won’t include a link because I don’t think it’ll exist after this weekend – it’s on the QRZ ham site.

We left Winthrop Friday morning. We drove east on WA20 past Twisp, then headed down WA153 which brought us to the Columbia River at Pateros where we hit US97. We were following our bread crumbs from our trip coming west, but this time I didn’t follow WA174 to Grand Coulee. Instead, I followed WA17 south to Coulee City. This is a little longer than going through Grand Coulee, but it avoids the steep climbs and descents and it’s a much easier drive – both on me and on the coach.

We’re back at the Elk’s Lodge in Coeur d’Alene. After getting set up, we walked east on Prairie Avenue about a quarter of a mile to a paved lot with food trucks. We saw this place – Prairie Street Eats – a few weeks ago when we were here and wanted to try it out. They had a wide variety of food served from more than half a dozen trucks and trailers. I went for a wet shredded beef burrito that was tasty and Donna opted for Indian cuisine – a chicken curry that she was craving.

I had my antennas set up and programmed a few repeaters for the area. There wasn’t much activity on the VHF and UHF frequencies, so I switched to HF 20-meter band. I made several contacts and had a couple of nice conversations. The first one was with a guy in Boyne City, Michigan. He was surprised to find I knew where Boyne City was. I knew about Boyne City from my good friend and former colleague, Keith Burk. Keith would take his fast boat to Boyne City for an event called Boyne Thunder. By fast boat, I mean an offshore racer type boat that could speed at more than 80 miles per hour on the water!

The other guy I talked to was a real nice fella in Texas. He had a ranch outside of Witchita Falls, northwest of Dallas. He’s retired and with all of the coronavirus stuff he said he hasn’t been traveling and only goes to Witchita Falls when necessary. Ham radio is his contact with the world.

We picked a hot time to return to Coeur d’Alene. The high yesterday was 82 degrees, but the forecast calls for 91 degrees today and upper 90s through the middle of next week.

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