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North Cascades Travelog #5
Winthrop, WA - Sat, 2 Sep 2023, 10pm.
It's getting late in the day, and I can already see that I'm going to fall behind on preparing photos to share in these blogs. Instead of growing a backlog waiting on time to do photos and post things in chronological order, I'm going to skip ahead and post a daily wrap-up.
Saturday morning we left the hotel next to Spokane airport and headed southwest toward Palouse Falls, about 2 hours away. Palouse Falls is a large drop, about 200', into a rocky canyon up to 500' deep. Through a letter writing campaign by local elementary schoolers it was named Washington's official state falls. We visited Palouse Falls two years ago and wanted to come again because (a) it's beautiful, (b) the weather was kind of poor last time, and (c) we didn't venture down into the canyon. Alas option (c) is no longer available. The state has closed all the trails even partway down into the canyon, and has rangers present to yell at people going around barricades, because some dumbasses killed themselves falling over the edge.
In the afternoon we drove a somewhat scenic route from Palouse Falls northwest across the high desert part of the state. ...Or, more accurately, the channeled scabland part of the state. Geographically it's not high desert though it does kind of look like it, until you see lakes and rivers. Things got really interesting when we reached a string of lakes around Coulee, Washington nestled beneath tall basalt cliffs. We continued driving through this part of the state, choosing lesser highways that routed us through small towns.
We pulled into the small town of Winthrop just after 6pm. We logged 331 miles driving today. We're staying here the next three nights.
Why Winthrop? REVENGE. This is partly a revenge trip. No, not post-Covid revenge, the kind of revenge travel everyone talks about. This is personal revenge. Winthrop is where our car broke down in the middle of a 10-day driving trip around the Pacific Northwest six years ago. We were stuck in town for a few days and had to get the car towed back over the mountains to a dealership near Seattle. The repairs and associated costs ultimately ran well into the thousands. Half the vacation was ruined. We lost several days of planned hiking and outdoors enjoyment.
So now we're back in Winthrop, and this time it's personal. 🤣
Winthrop, WA - Sat, 2 Sep 2023, 10pm.
It's getting late in the day, and I can already see that I'm going to fall behind on preparing photos to share in these blogs. Instead of growing a backlog waiting on time to do photos and post things in chronological order, I'm going to skip ahead and post a daily wrap-up.
Saturday morning we left the hotel next to Spokane airport and headed southwest toward Palouse Falls, about 2 hours away. Palouse Falls is a large drop, about 200', into a rocky canyon up to 500' deep. Through a letter writing campaign by local elementary schoolers it was named Washington's official state falls. We visited Palouse Falls two years ago and wanted to come again because (a) it's beautiful, (b) the weather was kind of poor last time, and (c) we didn't venture down into the canyon. Alas option (c) is no longer available. The state has closed all the trails even partway down into the canyon, and has rangers present to yell at people going around barricades, because some dumbasses killed themselves falling over the edge.
In the afternoon we drove a somewhat scenic route from Palouse Falls northwest across the high desert part of the state. ...Or, more accurately, the channeled scabland part of the state. Geographically it's not high desert though it does kind of look like it, until you see lakes and rivers. Things got really interesting when we reached a string of lakes around Coulee, Washington nestled beneath tall basalt cliffs. We continued driving through this part of the state, choosing lesser highways that routed us through small towns.
We pulled into the small town of Winthrop just after 6pm. We logged 331 miles driving today. We're staying here the next three nights.
Why Winthrop? REVENGE. This is partly a revenge trip. No, not post-Covid revenge, the kind of revenge travel everyone talks about. This is personal revenge. Winthrop is where our car broke down in the middle of a 10-day driving trip around the Pacific Northwest six years ago. We were stuck in town for a few days and had to get the car towed back over the mountains to a dealership near Seattle. The repairs and associated costs ultimately ran well into the thousands. Half the vacation was ruined. We lost several days of planned hiking and outdoors enjoyment.
So now we're back in Winthrop, and this time it's personal. 🤣
