Waterfall Hunting in the Inland Empire. Maskless Lunch.

Inland Empire Travelog #3
Colville, WA - Fri, 14 May 2021. 1pm.

Well, we're back to Colville. Yes, we were here this morning after arriving last night. Then we left. And now we're back. We're in the Inland Empire— eastern Washington and the Idaho panhandle— to visit waterfalls. We have a guidebook full of them. Sometimes they're even where the book says they are. 😅

We left the hotel this morning just before 9am and drove a bit west to the town of Kettle Falls. You might think with a name like Kettle Falls the town has a waterfall. Possible even a waterfall named Kettle Falls? Haha, no, you'd be wrong. The falls is called Meyers Falls.



It also wasn't where our guidebook said it would be. The Very Dull Book of Waterfalls by Dr. Smedley Q. Boredom contains numerous errors, little things like the wrong name of a street and confusing left vs. right turns. Y'know, the kinds of things that are standard for guidebooks.

But at least we found the falls. That wasn't quite the case with the next falls we looked for, near the town of Northport just south of the Canada border. We hunted around for almost an hour trying to find Sheep Creek Falls. We did glimpse a bit of it, I think. Part of the problem is that it's on private property, I think. ...Which is also another problem with the book. Terms like, "Note, you can't actually go here" are missing.

Anyway, here we are after our first leg of the day, back in Colville. We're passing back through as we heard further east— hopefully with better luck finding the next 3 waterfalls on our list. But first we stopped for lunch.

Lunch. Indoors. Without Masks!

When we planned this trip a few weeks ago we figured we'd eat by buying groceries and occasional take-out food. But then the CDC's guidance changed within the past few days. Now it's full vaxxed = no mask needed except in extreme circumstances. People have been talking about it everywhere we've gone today. Businesses are relaxing their policies. We relaxed ours enough to chose to eat lunch inside a Mexican restaurant today.

Eating lunch in a restaurant today was... good... and slightly weird. Good, because the food was good and getting back to normal was good. But also weird because everybody in the restaurant seemed to be staring. Like, were they staring at us for not wearing masks? I hope not because they weren't either!

Douglas and Crystal Falls

Inland Empire Travelog #4
Remote Northeastern Washington - Fri, 14 May 2021. 2:30pm.

This morning we drove around to a few waterfalls west and north of Colville and then circled back through town for lunch (see previous blog). With a satisfying lunch in our bellies we're now headed east and north from Colville to visit more waterfalls. So far we're "two for two" on the afternoon leg, an improvement over the misdirections we suffered this morning.

First up was Douglas Falls, in Douglas Falls State Park just a few miles northeast of Colville.



Washington has a pretty nice state parks system. There's lots of natural beauty to protect and feature in parks, and the state has provided a really convenient way to pay entry fees via automated kiosks. California has truly magnificent parks but relies on 1950s era technology of requiring visitors to stuff money in an envelope when there isn't a paid employee sitting there to collect payment. And the fee is generally some odd amount like $6. You either carry exact change or way overpay with a ten or twenty.

Alas this state park was so small, or so new— or both— that there was no kiosk. At least there was a "15 minutes free parking" area... which we abused by staying for almost 30 minutes. We're rebels, I know. 30 minutes was about all we needed in this compact little park. And given its remote location and the fact it's still a weekday, we had it all to ourselves. We might have stayed longer but we still had other places to visit and many miles to drive before calling it a day.

Next, as we continued driving northeast on state highway 20, was Crystal Falls.



Crystal Falls isn't a park. It's just... a falls you can see from the side of the road. There's a barely marked pullout on the side of the country highway. A flight of terraced steps leads to a viewpoint atop a natural rock outcropping with metal rails to keep people from falling into the gorge. Technically the area is the Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge... or at least that's what I think it is. Again, this highway pulloff is barely marked! But it's a nice place. And again, we had it all to ourselves.