June 27 Our first destination as we drove through the scablands, usually within sight of the Columbia River, was the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park. This park has both a walking trail and an interpretive center, which are separated by a mile or so of road. This link to Google Maps shows the park as south of the road into Vantage, but all the interesting stuff is on the north side.
View Larger Map There is a modest building at the entrance to the trail. It does provide shade, which is important in the summer months.
At the beginning of the trail, we read the rattlesnake warning that is common in the scablands. It's a standard park sign. We didn't expect to actually encounter a rattler, but tomorrow we would.
This picture looks back towards the entrance building. After the first switchback the trail is all gravel and sagebrush and dust.
The trail features petrified ginkgo, elm, redwood, douglas fir, and other trees. To protect them from any further damage by souvenir collectors or thoughtless tourists, the trees (some are stumps, some are horizontal log fragments) are each protected by a heavy metal grating.
Each stop has a number, as you see, which is a key into a free booklet.
On their return to the entrance, Lyn and Elisabeth discovered a napping bushy-tailed woodrat. This identification comes from a ranger at the interpretive center, not from us. The especially charming part of this discovery was that the woodrat was clearly dreaming; every so often he/she would emit a loud squeak.
We drove down to the interpretive center and had our lunch. Here is a panorama of the valley; the center sits just above the river. The bridge you see on the right is for I-90, and it is visible in the Google Map at the start of this post.
The interpretive center also hosts about 60 petroglyphs that were rescued from rising waters when the Wanapum Dam was built just downstream.
Just a few miles up I-90 is the Wild Horse Monument, a collection of 15 sculptures called "Grandfather Lets Loose the Ponies."
We didn't climb to the top, but there were views in many directions from the parking area. The next photo looks back and highlights the oasis that is the interpretive center we had just left.
Just a few miles further, and a couple miles off of I-90, is Frenchman Coulee. This is a broad and deep canyon formed during the ice age floods, as this striking image from Google Maps shows.
View Larger Map Here is the view from eye-level near the top of the road.
Pausing amid the stones along the side of the road was a very handsome lizard.
The variety of rock formations at Frenchman Coulee attracts many rock climbers, from beginners to expert. One popular formation, behind me as I took the photos above, is called "The Feathers."
A closer examination of the rocks at most any time of day will reveal climbers.
We stopped at Ephrata, our overnight stay, chosen solely for its location on our route to Mazama. It was too late to see the collection of buildings at the Grant County Historical Society, but the staff kindly allowed us to peruse the memorabilia, keepsakes, and antiques in the indoor section. After driving up to Soap Lake, we had dinner at Don's restaurant. Soap Lake is known for its mineral water and curative mud. As the interest in taking such cures in a remote location has waned over the years, Soap Lake came up with the idea for a supplementary tourist attraction, still in the planning stages, a gigantic lava lamp. Best wishes to Soap Lake!
June 28 We began the next day continuing north. On our way to the Dry Falls Heritage Area we paused at a viewpoint above the heart of Sun Lakes State Park, one of several state parks in this stretch of the Columbia River.
No more than a five minute drive from this photo is the visitor center for the Dry Falls Heritage Area. After pulling into the parking area, most people are drawn immediately to the overlook.
Before the ice age floods, a waterfall existed near Soap Lake, about 15 miles away. Then the cold floods came, and the waterfall eroded headward as the churning water yanked chunks of rock from the face of the falls. Three and a half miles wide and with a drop of over 400 feet, the falls then would have been among the largest in the world.
The visitor center itself has exhibits on geology, natural history, and of course the formation of the Dry Falls. A sudden commotion alerted us to an unexpected visitor next to the door to the women's restroom -- both restrooms have exterior entrances.
This rattlesnake was enjoying the shade provided by the center. I certainly kept my distance, as did half a dozen others, and used the camera's zoom to capture this picture. The ranger at the center contacted the "rattlesnake guy," who relocated our guest far off into the sagebrush.
We lunched in Grand Coulee, and on our way out of town drove to an overlook to view the Grand Coulee Dam. This immense structure was started during the Great Depression, and was finished in time for World War II, the Manhattan project, and extensive irrigation for agribusiness. The viewpoint needed to be at least a mile away to allow visitors to take in the entire scene.
Note how the heavy spring runoff (twice the usual snowpack) has swamped some of the low-lying areas near the dam (click on the photo to enlarge). You can't get a true impression of the dam unless you hear its thunder, and see the plumes, so I've included a brief video clip: Then we turned towards Mazama, our base of operations for the next three days. We followed the valleys into the North Cascades National Park.
We checked into the Freestone Inn. This view from the back patio of the inn shows that we're out of the badlands and into the mountains, albeit on the dry side of the Cascades.
Joan and I took a walk around the pond, and I took this picture looking towards the Freestone. We're looking at the back of the inn, but that's more scenic than the front, which has a parking area and gravel roads leading to cabins. The Freestone's web site photo is also of the back!
In the next three days we'd be tackling some hikes. Our options were reduced because of the lingering snowpack at the higher elevations, but as you'll see, we found good choices.
After a month away from the keyboard, accumulating more adventures to document, it's time to continue the Washington odyssey.
We departed early the next morning from Bellingham's airport, but not back to Columbus; rather, we were journeying, via Seattle, to the Tri-Cities (Pasco/Richland/Kennewick) in southeastern Washington. Located smack in the middle of the rain shadow east of the Cascade Mountains, the Tri-Cities receive 7 to 8 inches of rain per year, and the climate is classified as a shrub steppe -- think sagebrush. The Google Map below shows many green areas, which are almost all irrigated. The exceptions would be the banks and islands of the Columbia River.
Why the Tri-Cities? Joan's best friend since high school, Lyn Neely, and her daughter Elisabeth live there, and being in the neighborhood (Bellingham is much closer than Columbus!), we planned to get together. In fact, Lyn and Elisabeth's first proposed itinerary would have required at least four weeks to follow. To fit our schedule it was pared down to two.
This area is perhaps best known for the nuclear activities at the Hanford Site, including the reactor that created the material for the first plutonium-based atomic bombs. Now the primary work at Hanford is cleaning up decades of radioactive waste through vitrification, or blending of the waste with glass-like materials. The influence of the World War II and Cold War eras lingers here; for example, the local high school team is known as the Richland Bombers, whose logo is a mushroom cloud. We also had fantastic pizzas at the Atomic Ale Brewpub, although I skipped the Halflife Hefeweizen and Plutonium Porter.
The next morning the four of us took a walk on the trail along the Columbia River. The river was high, due to the winter's snowpack being twice the normal amount. Here you can see a submerged section of the trail, in front of the benches.
Later that day we visited LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravity-Wave Observatory, during a scheduled open house. The purpose of this observatory is to observe gravitation waves, predicted by Einstein but never yet seen. Because the waves are expected to be extremely weak, this is no simple task. In short, the experiment bounces laser beams back and forth repeatedly down each of two four-kilometer arms that are at right angles to each other. A passing gravity wave will create a discrepancy between the two arms -- of about one-thousandth the diameter of a proton! That's small. In this photo, one arm stretches towards the vitrification plant being built in the distance (click on the photo to enlarge, and then squint).
Here is the main building, and the beginnings of both arms.
Extreme measures are taken to reduce noise and vibration that would interfere with the sensitive measurements of LIGO. The air conditioning units, for example, are mounted on springs on a separate, external concrete pad. When observations are underway, airplanes are requested to not fly over the site. (Observations were not going on at the time of our visit, or for a while to come, because the LIGO is undergoing advanced upgrades that will increase its sensitivity by a factor of 1,000 in 2014/2015.) Ultimately, an instrument this sensitive cannot be isolated from all noise. Predictable effects, such as the tides, can be compensated for. The final test for any potential gravitational wave event is whether the same event was seen at the twin LIGO facility in Louisiana.
In the next photo, a motorcycle belonging to one of the lead scientists is parked near the main building, in a surplus section of the protective shell for the LIGO arms.
Before setting out on our tour, we also accompanied Lyn and Elisabeth to a choir practice at their church, and to the Sunday service. We also visited the Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology, a museum with local roots that was hosting a traveling exhibit on early explorers and mapmakers of the Columbia River Valley.
The day after our visit to LIGO, we walked to the top of Badger Mountain. This local prominence was saved from the development lapping at its feet by the Friends of Badger Mountain. During the Ice Age floods and the repeated temporary formation of Lake Lewis, Badger Mountain and similar peaks would have been islands. Ice-rafted erratic glacial boulders were carried onto the flanks of Badger.
From the top I created a panorama of about 180°. I was sloppy, so some of the foreground does not line up, but you can see the Tri-Cities and the Columbia River laid out upon the flat plain (click on the photo to enlarge).
Soon it was time to pick up a rental car at the airport and start our foursome's loop through Washington state. The first stage was a two-day journey to Mazama, in the North Cascades. That will be the subject of the next post.
