I was born and raised in Washington State and have traveled
a good portion of the State’s back roads as I am truly in love with the many
landscapes here. The one section I have always thought I needed to go see and
never got around to was the southern section from Yakima east.
Recently while in a small town grocery store / gas station /
hardware store a book on the counter caught my eye titled “Bretz’s Flood”
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| https://www.amazon.com/Bretzs-Flood-Remarkable-Geologist-Greatest/dp/1570615055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495944451&sr=8-1&keywords=bretz%27s+flood |
I ended up ordering and then reading
the story of how a maverick geologist in the early 1900’s broke with common
thinking and determined that the landforms in the southern mid-section of my
state were not formed by the slow processes of “normal erosion” but rather by
the cataclysm of perhaps the largest flood (now believed to be floods) the
world has ever known. Suddenly a lot of pieces of landforms I had seen in my
travels in Eastern Washington that “just didn’t feel right” according to my one
semester of college geology started to fall into place and I was more motivated
to head over and see the area with new eyes.
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| Typical Eastern Washington Scablands terrain |
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| Typical Eastern Washington Scablands terrain |
Then it hit me that I only expect to live in Washington
full-time for another couple of months. The choice was no longer how long to
procrastinate but rather to go now or possibly never get to this fascinating
part of the State.
The other sights I had procrastinated about seeing for years
were the Hanford nuclear reservation where the nuclear materials needed for the
bombs used in WWII were put together, the Hanford reach which is the only
free-running, non-tidal section of the Columbia River On the US side of the
border, and the Snake River.
With a three day stretch of free days coming up I decided
that Jarvis and I would head out on a road trip from Tuesday to Thursday. I had been asked to put in a 15 hour shift at
the hospital on Monday so I figured that getting camping gear would have to
wait until after I left Clarice off at the bus station at 06:15 on Tuesday morning.
Tuesday morning dawned and Jarvis and I left Clarice off to
catch her bus to work and then headed over to Clarice’s parents “farm” where
most of our camping gear is stored. Everything went smoothly as I gathered the
gear from the loft over the garage and then headed back to the boat. On the boat I gathered clothing, sleeping
bag, camera, binoculars, and everything else I could quickly think of in my
mildly sleep deprived state before heading to a doctor’s appointment to get
prescriptions renewed before the Great Boating Adventure begins. From the doctor’s appointment Jarvis and I
headed toward the I-90 pass over the Cascade Mountain Range to our entry into
Eastern Washington. We were well on our way to Snoqualmie Pass when I realized
that our tent and ground pads are stored on the boat rather than with the rest
of the camping gear – we were off on a camping trip with no tent.
Our first stop was a short way over Snoqualmie Pass where I
took a nostalgic side trip to look for Meany Ski Lodge owned by the Seattle
Mountaineers
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| https://www.mountaineers.org/about/locations-reservations/meany-lodge |
. I had belonged to the Mountaineers while I was in high school and visited
Meany several times to ski and have wonderful memories of what has to be one of
the last VERY rustic ski lodges and ski hills located so far off the beaten
track that winter visitors have to be towed on their skis behind a sno-cat the
last distance through the forest to the lodge.
I also remember getting part of my driving education in my friend’s
mother’s (gutless) Ford Mustang as we travelled the logging roads to the
weather station on the top of Stampede Pass and then visited Meany for a summer
view. On this trip we had a nice walk in the forest (Jarvis, to his delight,
sans leash) but the snow level was still too low to reach the weather station
or Meany.
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| Jarvis enjoying some off leash time near Hanford Reach |
Our next stop was to get some lunch and fuel in Cle Elum
where we were informed that the most likely place to get a cheap used tent was
in the Goodwill store in Ellensburg. So
after a quick tour and picnic at the old railroad yard museum in town we headed
on eastward to Ellensburg.
In Ellensburg we ended up buying a cheap new tent and an air
mattress before heading through the Yakima Canyon route to Yakima Sportsman
State Park. We found that apparently no one goes camping the week before
Memorial Day and had no trouble finding a really nice camp site and we put up
the cheap new tent and tried to settle in for the night (that is I tried to
settle in – Jarvis can sleep through pretty much anything). The central basin of Eastern Washington does
not have a lot of trees or land forms and so the wind is pretty much a
constant. That night it was a very energetic constant and the 4 ft tall tent
was compressed to about 2 ft tall during the worst gusts. In any case the wind
subsided by 11 PM and we made it through the night with no disasters.
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| The very cheap tent before the wind got bad. |
The next morning our real quest to see territory that was
new to me began.
We headed due east and
before long I started to recognize the flood carved “scablands” described by
Dr. Bretz. We reached the Hanford Reach area and I was pleased to find that
from the highway and some decent gravel back roads I was able to get a good
look at the Hanford Reach section of the Columbia River and with our fancy
binoculars see the historic nuclear reactors on the opposite shore.
Among the sights was a quick look at a flock
of rare white pelicans.
I had read about
them but wasn’t too impressed until I realized that what I thought were people
floating in inner-tube were really huge birds.
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| Historic Hanford nuclear reactors across the Columbia River |
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| Hanford Reach section of the Columbia River |
Since I had never seen the Snake River we made a short side
trip down the hill to the river’s edge.
While the famous Hell’s Canyon was further east the river was worth
seeing and I got the added bonus of seeing one of the longest and highest
railroad bridges where the tracks cross the river.
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| Rail bridge over the Snake River at Starbuck |
From The Palouse we headed pretty much due north to our
planned stop for the night at Dry Falls – Sun Lakes State Park. Dry Falls is understood to be the remnant of one of the largest water falls to ever grace Planet Earth.
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| Dry Falls from visitor center |
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| Dry Falls State Park |
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| Dry Falls from the lake at the base of the falls |
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| Looking down the coulee from Dry Falls |
We found a camp
site that was well protected from the wind and took a walk then drive around
the area and park.
We returned to make
dinner only to discover that our campsite had previously been vacated by
another camping family due to its infestation with mosquitoes. While I was able
to keep them at bay with long clothes and repellant, poor Jarvis was
defenseless except for his short coat of fur.
I was reticent to put repellant on him for fear it would injure his skin
or that he would lick it off and get sick from it.
I even tried putting one of my t-shirts on
him which worked for about 15 minutes before it fell off.
In the end we went into the tent early and
even though it was cheap, it did prove to be mosquito proof.
For our final day we headed due west on Highway 2 into
territory and soon reached the Columbia River and territory that was very
familiar to me. We arrived home about noon to a lovely sunny Western Washington
day and a waiting Clarice.
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