Sometime in the early 2000s, my former husband Tony and I found ourselves at the old Tractor Tavern in Ballard listening to some unknown, but very good, singer songwriter open for one of my favorite Canadian folk singers, Garnet Rogers.   Her name was Karen Armstrong, and aside from one song, I don't really remember much of her performance.  That one song though hit me, and I love it to this day.   I bought her CD just for that song alone.  That song is "Leaving Lincoln County", and it's been running through my mind for much of the last few days as I've wandered about Central and Eastern Washington on this working photo shoot ride.The song's lyrics speak of finding ones self as one travels, and the things one discovers while pondering the world moving about from place to place, and much of it, like the title says, takes place here in Lincoln County, WA.   As I was heading East on US-2 on Thursday, out of the corner of my eye I spotted a small abandoned cluster of buildings off the road in what turned out to be the near ghost town of Govan, which also happens to be in Lincoln County.   There, in the middle of a wheat field was a wonderful old derelict school house.  Unfortunately, the lighting was wrong -- the sun was in the West, and so it was backlit, and I needed East light.  And there was already another photo crew there shooting some professional pictures too.  I guess I'm not the only one who likes places like this -- but they were clearly posing models on it for something esle.   I made a note to hit it on the way back West on Friday.   In Spokane that night I was plotting my trip back and I noticed however,  a key place in the song -- Keller's ferry, and it was a few miles North of Wilbur which is just East of Govan.   Long story short,  I started tracing another route, incorporating the ferry across Lake Roosevelt and back down past Grand Coulee Dam -- both places I'd never been.

The song goes like this:  I am leaving Lincoln County, on the shore of Lake Roosevelt.  I wait for Keller's Ferry, to ferry me across.  Now this is no MTV video (and MTV doesn't even show videos anymore, but I digress), but here is a mini slide show instead.  I wish I could embed the audio to the song too but I can't.
The picture on the left is the road leaving Lincoln County, winding down towards the shore of Lake Roosevelt, and ending at the stop sign for Keller's Ferry, while the "road" goes down like a boat ramp into the water, where the ferry docks and you drive up onto it.  The road once it leaves US-2 winds and drops from the prairie down to the lake like a long thin pasta noodle.  The ferry is not scheduled -- it just goes back and forth whenever there is a car waiting.   In my case, I had three cars and myself.   The road goes up into the Confederated Colville Tribes reservation towards the small settlement of Keller, and then on into Ferry County and it's county seat of Republic,  and then further North.  It's very sparsely populated.

The song goes on:  There is no one around for miles, it's just me and this old ferry man.  White clouds in the sky, casing shadows on the lake.  Against the rail beneath my parasol, staring at the distance as if one more time I could see your beautiful face.   And the Ferry is called Martha, the name of my mother..."