The Wal Mart parking lot proved to be a most adequate place to sleep. You would not call it a great camping spot. Certainly not the kind of place you would want to sit in a camp chair, next to the motor home and drink a beer, but flat, safe and relatively quiet. Also in the morning a short stroll to the store provided very clean and warm rest rooms.

After a walk around the shopping area and an adjacent housing development we continued west along US-2. The day was cool but sunny and frankly the kind of weather that makes driving a little sleep inducing. So Nina had a spell driving today so that I could sleep a little.

Late in the morning we paid a visit to the (very )small town of Hatline WA. It's half a mile off the highway and we were attracted to it by the number of grain silos, more of those than houses. We strolled up and down the main street and exchanged greetings with a couple of the local dogs and had a conversation with a couple of the local people.

Moving on we had lunch on the driveway of an abandoned gas station just west of Coullee City, WA. There was still a small amount of ice on the water of Banks Lake which forms one of the borders of the Coullee City.

Mid afternoon we came across Lincoln Rock State park on a small bluff overlooking the Columbia River and decided to stop there for the night. We noticed a good number of small furry animals running around the camping ground. Nina discovered, thanks to a poster in the park, that they were yellow bellied marmots. Apparently they are unique to that area and they hibernate from June till February. We were amazed by this; they are in fact dormant for more than 8 months of the year. Also hibernation is nor the correct term. There is another term for dormancy during the summer but we cannot remember what it was - something like estivation.