Highway Tunnel | Chelan, WA | October 2019
The tunnel appears as a little blemish on the side of the mountain’s huge, rocky face. Like a freckle, hardly noticed. It’s definitely big enough for cement trucks, but also smaller than some boulders on the cliffs above. Once or twice a month we zip through the tunnel’s length (788 feet) and pretend it’s a portal to some exotic elsewhere. Pennsylvania, maybe. That notion evaporates as we pop out the other end, realizing we’ve just driven through solid rock and are now coasting down to one of the world’s great rivers. That’s exotic enough.
[In photo: Knapp’s Hill Tunnel is on Highway 97A south of Lake Chelan and above the Columbia River.]
A CLOSER LOOK:
IrwinFoto 