Eastern Washington – Snake River Country

The Guinea Pig says: Wheat, wheat, wheat!

I thought I had seen a lot of wheat fields in North Dakota, but Eastern Washington figured out that the way to get more wheat per acre was to eliminate everything else, including roads, buildings, trees, brush, rocks & water. For miles and miles you see nothing but golden fields. It’s rather awe inspiring, actually. I found myself humming “America the Beautiful“, one of my mother’s favorite Campfire Girl songs.

Few endeavors compete with the economic power of wheat here – you rarely see cattle for example.  There is one industry that has a begrudging foothold however, and that’s wind power. Apparently the titanic wind turbines require a minimal sacrifice of all-important wheat space so they busily spin out revenue above the yellow shocks, planted as close to the foot of the towers as possible.

Other than the power lines connected to the turbines and the occasional hydroelectric dam the Corps has built on the Snake River, my drive into the interior of the state of Washington was pretty much a duotone of golden wheat and gray smoke from distant wildfires.

Amazon really does go everywhere

I’d been moving a lot recently, so I planned to spend a full week at Tucannon River RV Park. It was a small place, owned by a farmer who built it as a hunting camp for his buddies in the cold season and then brought in a couple to act as campground hosts for the spring and summer. The park offered flat grassy sites, full hookups and terrific scenery for a very modest price. The downside was the river valley location was impervious to all cellular service and the park WiFi anemic.   I was ready to trade isolation for connectivity at that point so it was a good choice.

Since I was going to be in one place for a while, I decided to test the limits of Amazon’s Prime delivery promise. Back in Georgia I typically bought stuff from Amazon a couple times a month, but being on the move put an end to this. I’m all for supporting the local economy by shopping in stores where I travel, but sometimes I need specialty items that you must get from a larger marketplace. I’d been researching dash cameras for a while. Encounters with flying rocks and pop-up deer were becoming more common, and I wanted the added evidence of a video record just in case. As a non-essential purchase this was a good opportunity to see how reliable Amazon’s delivery would be 30 miles from the nearest outposts of civilization.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised. My order was placed on Friday, and on Tuesday the brown UPS truck pulled up in front of my campsite as promised. Kudos to Jeff Bezos & company for exceeding my expectations. Now I feel comfortable using Amazon just about anywhere in the lower 48.

Palouse Falls State Park

I’d given up trying to figure out which days would be clear by this point since the smoke would come and go depending on the prevailing wind. The day I’d planned for a day trip to Palouse Falls turned out to be a smoky one. This park is mostly for sightseers. There were a handful of walk-in tent camping sites, but even the small pop-up truck camper that came in behind me was denied an overnight stay. They went on down the road to try their luck in the Umatilla National Forest to the Southeast.

The falls are very impressive, with the water dropping over 200 feet, but cannot be reached by foot via any developed trail. There are several good overlooks to view them from across the canyon, even though the smoke did interfere somewhat.  The DNR had a portable warning sign on the road in advising four people had fallen to their deaths in the last year in the park. I don’t doubt it, as the bluffs are crumbly and the barriers easily bypassed if you were both foolish and determined.

If you got tired of looking at the waterfall and canyon, there was a good bit of wildlife wandering about as well.

Lyons Ferry State Park

Half way between my basecamp and the falls was a small day use park called Lyons Ferry. Like Many Glacier, the water there was smooth as glass because of the lack of wind. Unfortunately just like at Glacier that meant plenty of smoke too. As a Northern California boy I love fog. The smoke may look similar, but it is altogether different to be in – it makes your eyes scratchy and breathing unpleasant, just like sitting too close to a campfire.

Snake River and Little Goose Dam

The smaller rivers like the Palouse and Tucannon all feed into the Snake, which in turn joins the Columbia on the way to the Pacific Ocean. That makes the Snake the best waterway to ship all the wheat out of Eastern Washington, with a little help from the Corps of Engineers. The Corps has done their lock and dam thing all along the Snake. That made the river deeper and wider to provide flood control, power and free navigation for barges full of raw material for your next bagel or cupcake. Though it was only a few miles north of my basecamp, the Little Goose Dam was a fair drive to get to since there are only a few access points to the steep canyon the Snake runs through.

One final comment about Washington State Parks: they are by far the most expensive of any state I’ve visited to date. Even parking in one of the day use areas for a picnic costs you $10 per day unless you purchase an annual pass for $30 which you can only get at a park with a manned office. If you don’t display a parking pass on your vehicle you get a ticket and a $100 fine. On top of that, the campsite rate is $35 per night. Pretty pricey for water and electric, especially when private RV parks that offer more amenities are available for less in the same area. It doesn’t seem to me like Washington residents are getting a lot of value for their tax dollars.

Next time: How wheat farmers may transform the fast food business in the 21st Century