The Wild Brown Yonder, Part 2
Following up on an earlier 2012 vacation post, after cooling our dogs in Icicle Creek, we invested several hours in a roundtrip down to Wenatchee for dinner, despite knowing we would be traveling that way again in the AM. It's a pleasant meander following the Wenatchee River, albeit multi-lane and paved, with scenery in abundance including attractions like the Peshastin Pinnacles, a terrific sandstone rock-climbing mecca, visible in the distance. Besides the draw of a familiar brew-pub we could be confident would not be 90% catering to tourists, there was another lure, almost another Vacation Quality Objective (see previous post) for us the last couple years. Namely, a fabric shop (we visited almost a score during this trip).
Retracing our route east the next morning, we regretfully bypassed Ohme Gardens, a fantastic spot high on the hillside north of Wenatchee that we last visited alas over 20 years ago. But we had many miles to go before we slept - and no room reserved for the night. After crossing the mighty Columbia, we enjoyed a great though brief passage through fruit country driving north along the river's east bank, with orchards, fruit stands, and all the associated paraphernalia at times crowding both sides of the highway until U.S. Route 2 veered off to head east up the hill to Waterville Plateau, headed eventually for Grand Coulee and the eponymous dam. I must have passed this way as a youngster, when there was no I-90 alternative, but I have no recollection of it. Nowadays, thanks to immersion in multiple sources on the subject of the ice age floods that scoured the area, every turn and crossroads, probably boring to many including perhaps my youthful self, resonates with potential dramatic flood-scape interest.
As Exhibit A, I'm pretty certain my passenger was nowhere near as agog as I when our route dipped briefly through Moses Coulee. This now-dry tremendous former drainage is believed to represent the first major re-routing of the pre-Columbia River by an advancing ice sheet in the last ice age. The new drainage was subsequently eroded far beyond the needs of the routine Columbia drainage by the gargantuan floods released out of Montana and Idaho when mega-lakes impounded by other ice sheets advancing there were repeatedly released, leading to those Ice Age Floods I alluded to. U.S. 2 makes use of an astonishing 300'-high "gravel bar" left by these floods to descend to the floor of the Coulee.
This is obviously fantastically scenic and interesting country, especially if you can tolerate a little dry, rocky, and brown. Some day I hope to find some time to do some more leisurely exploration. I've temporarily misplaced a fascinating road log of the relatively obscure and likely largely unpaved (oh joy!) route that traverses Moses Coulee. But I will find it!
A subsequent further ice advance eventually blocked Moses Coulee, leading to the pre-Columbia being diverted further upstream (i.e., east). This initiated what would eventually become the much-better-known Grand Coulee, famed due to the little concrete impoundment of the river instituted by that damned (so to speak) intrusive FDR gummint. Well, that and Woody G's immortal tune. The GC was subsequently (i.e., post ice-blockage, not post-Guthrie) enlarged even beyond the magnificent proportions of Moses by yet more flooding from huge ice-sheet impoundments in Montana, including the monumental erosion that produced Dry Falls, a stupendous (running short of superlatives) precipice 400' high and more than 3 miles in length. The mind reels at the concept of a monster flood flowing over this cliff. As they say, Niagara would have been truly puny by comparison.
The route past Banks Lake to GC and the dam was even more mind-boggling and breathtaking when we came upon it last year. At some pain, I resisted the urge this time around ("miles to go") to stop for pictures. These are from our previous visit.
You remember your Tom Swifties, don't you? At least this classic: "Damn" said Tom, grandly but cooly.
Retracing our route east the next morning, we regretfully bypassed Ohme Gardens, a fantastic spot high on the hillside north of Wenatchee that we last visited alas over 20 years ago. But we had many miles to go before we slept - and no room reserved for the night. After crossing the mighty Columbia, we enjoyed a great though brief passage through fruit country driving north along the river's east bank, with orchards, fruit stands, and all the associated paraphernalia at times crowding both sides of the highway until U.S. Route 2 veered off to head east up the hill to Waterville Plateau, headed eventually for Grand Coulee and the eponymous dam. I must have passed this way as a youngster, when there was no I-90 alternative, but I have no recollection of it. Nowadays, thanks to immersion in multiple sources on the subject of the ice age floods that scoured the area, every turn and crossroads, probably boring to many including perhaps my youthful self, resonates with potential dramatic flood-scape interest.
As Exhibit A, I'm pretty certain my passenger was nowhere near as agog as I when our route dipped briefly through Moses Coulee. This now-dry tremendous former drainage is believed to represent the first major re-routing of the pre-Columbia River by an advancing ice sheet in the last ice age. The new drainage was subsequently eroded far beyond the needs of the routine Columbia drainage by the gargantuan floods released out of Montana and Idaho when mega-lakes impounded by other ice sheets advancing there were repeatedly released, leading to those Ice Age Floods I alluded to. U.S. 2 makes use of an astonishing 300'-high "gravel bar" left by these floods to descend to the floor of the Coulee.
This is obviously fantastically scenic and interesting country, especially if you can tolerate a little dry, rocky, and brown. Some day I hope to find some time to do some more leisurely exploration. I've temporarily misplaced a fascinating road log of the relatively obscure and likely largely unpaved (oh joy!) route that traverses Moses Coulee. But I will find it!
A subsequent further ice advance eventually blocked Moses Coulee, leading to the pre-Columbia being diverted further upstream (i.e., east). This initiated what would eventually become the much-better-known Grand Coulee, famed due to the little concrete impoundment of the river instituted by that damned (so to speak) intrusive FDR gummint. Well, that and Woody G's immortal tune. The GC was subsequently (i.e., post ice-blockage, not post-Guthrie) enlarged even beyond the magnificent proportions of Moses by yet more flooding from huge ice-sheet impoundments in Montana, including the monumental erosion that produced Dry Falls, a stupendous (running short of superlatives) precipice 400' high and more than 3 miles in length. The mind reels at the concept of a monster flood flowing over this cliff. As they say, Niagara would have been truly puny by comparison.
The route past Banks Lake to GC and the dam was even more mind-boggling and breathtaking when we came upon it last year. At some pain, I resisted the urge this time around ("miles to go") to stop for pictures. These are from our previous visit.
You remember your Tom Swifties, don't you? At least this classic: "Damn" said Tom, grandly but cooly.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:58 PM
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