Roadside Sightseeing in Eastern Washington
Sep. 4th, 2023 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerNorth Cascades Travelog #4
Coulee City, WA - Sat, 2 Sep 2023, 4pm.
We've spent a lot of today blazing through the hinterlands of Eastern Washington. After our foiled revenge trip to Palouse Falls we started zig-zagging north and west across Washington toward tonight's destination of Winthrop. Why zig-zagging? Well, no roads go directly between these two distant and almost unheard-of places. And why Winthrop? Ah, that's out next act of revenge! More to come later on that.
Most of the drive this morning and early this afternoon has been dull, passing through rolling high desert type terrain. Around mid-afternoon things got more interesting, though, as we passed along a series of lakes beneath towering basalt cliffs. The photo above shows Lenore Lake, where we pulled off at a scenic viewpoint for a few minutes.
Just north of Lenore Lake is Alkali Lake, above. These two lakes are practically next to each other. The road actually threads along a narrow straight of land between them.
Driving through these remote areas also brought us past a spot called Dry Falls. We've been interested in seeing it since we saw it listed in a waterfalls book years ago. Yes, it's that dratted book. Would this be another bum steer from Professor Smedley Q. Boredom? Yes and no.
No, it wasn't a bum steer because Smedley was clear about this being a dry falls. Dry, as in there is no water... and probably hasn't been for 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age. But yes it was a bum steer because Smedly understated the amount of imagination required to imagine seeing a huge waterfalls here. 10,000 years ago these waterfalls were at least 10 times the size of Niagara Falls. Imagine Niagara Falls, but 3 miles wide! Except these cliffs just look like cliffs,
Coulee City, WA - Sat, 2 Sep 2023, 4pm.
We've spent a lot of today blazing through the hinterlands of Eastern Washington. After our foiled revenge trip to Palouse Falls we started zig-zagging north and west across Washington toward tonight's destination of Winthrop. Why zig-zagging? Well, no roads go directly between these two distant and almost unheard-of places. And why Winthrop? Ah, that's out next act of revenge! More to come later on that.
Most of the drive this morning and early this afternoon has been dull, passing through rolling high desert type terrain. Around mid-afternoon things got more interesting, though, as we passed along a series of lakes beneath towering basalt cliffs. The photo above shows Lenore Lake, where we pulled off at a scenic viewpoint for a few minutes.
Just north of Lenore Lake is Alkali Lake, above. These two lakes are practically next to each other. The road actually threads along a narrow straight of land between them.
Driving through these remote areas also brought us past a spot called Dry Falls. We've been interested in seeing it since we saw it listed in a waterfalls book years ago. Yes, it's that dratted book. Would this be another bum steer from Professor Smedley Q. Boredom? Yes and no.
No, it wasn't a bum steer because Smedley was clear about this being a dry falls. Dry, as in there is no water... and probably hasn't been for 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age. But yes it was a bum steer because Smedly understated the amount of imagination required to imagine seeing a huge waterfalls here. 10,000 years ago these waterfalls were at least 10 times the size of Niagara Falls. Imagine Niagara Falls, but 3 miles wide! Except these cliffs just look like cliffs,
