Yesterday we went to Turnbull National Wildlife Preserve. It’s about a 40 minute drive from Spokane. What a beautiful place! Wow! We will definately be going back there. Often. I think, since I’ve moved back here, it’s the first place where I felt connected with the environment.
I hope you enjoyed this tour of Eastern Washington this week! I sure did. I had a lot of fun exploring the area. Now it’s back to work tomorrow. ugh.
Yesterday we went to the Palouse Falls. Another feature of the Channeled Scablands. They were amazing. Totally worth the two hour drive.
As you can tell by now we didn’t make it to the coast this week. Instead we decided to take mini-road trips to places around here. Yesterday we went to Steptoe Butte. Steptoe Butte is a 3,612 foot tall hill-mountain-like structure that sits in the Palouse Hills. It’s kind of odd in away. The Palouse Hills kind of roll along pastorially and then all of a sudden you come upon this gigantic, well, butte, looming over them. Steptoe Butte was around before the “Great Missoula Lake Flood.” It actually withstood the water’s power. That is why the geology below looks the way it does. The rolling hills below are a result of the rolling waters of the flood.
Another interesting little tidbit: Steptoe Butte is also a Native American holy place. According to the Spokane Outdoors website:
Native peoples attained to sacred spirit quests here at their power mountain. It was customary for Indian youths entering adulthood to undertake a special journey, or spirit quest, in order to recieve a special guardian power from the Great Spiirit that would protect the person thoughout their life.
Okay so what was my experience like there? Here’s a picture of what it looks like. I took this as we were zooming out of the park. There is a road that you can drive all the way to the tippy top of that thing. Which we did. Well, I tried to, anyway. My fear of heights kicked in when we almost got to the top and I had to stop and walk the rest of the way. I just couldn’t drive it. So I walked and Raf drove the car to the top. I finally got there and took a bunch of pictures. As we were driving up (before I freaked out) we saw a byplane flying really low to the ground. It was really close to us on the road. And when we got to the top I tried to get a shot of it. It was so far below us that you can barely see it. That is how high up we were. I really didn’t like the feeling up there. Not only was the height bothering me but I felt trapped. there was something strange about this rock that loomed up above the peaceful palouse hills.
Yesterday we went to Dry Falls (a.k.a. Sun Lakes). It is exactly what the name implies. An old, dried-up falls. But it’s actually really quite cool. It’s Washington’s Grand Canyon. Really quite impressive. It is actually an ancient geological wonder. It is said that they were created when the Glacial Lake Montana burst from it’s natural dam and flooded the region (hence, the Channeled Scablands). Dry Falls was, at one time, the largest falls on earth. Bigger than Niagra. Wikipedia has an entry on Dry Falls that explains this geological wonder better than I can.
If you would like to see the rest of the pictures from Dry Falls check out my Flickr set.
