The landscape of eastern Washington could not present more of a contrast to what I found in Glacier Park. Aside from the occasional rock outcrop, it’s flat, flat, and more flat. Okay, well more like gently rolling hills, but it feels pretty flat by comparison. Lots of farmland, mostly wheat and potatoes.
We are just coming into harvest time, so the wheat fields are fairly mature. Driving around, you can see the combines starting to do their work as dust clouds rise from the distant horizon. But I had fun messing around in one as-yet-to-be-harvested wheat field, as you can see in the gallery. I tried to convey how endless the field seems to be. (My wife helpfully offered that I probably owed the farmer rent for use of his field.)
On the other hand, while you can drive for hours upon hours and see only endless wheat, there are occasionally other things to look at. Toward the end of the last ice age, this area bore the brunt of massive flash floods as an ice dam periodically built up and broke in western Montana. Impossibly large volumes of water flowed from the Missoula area through Washington to the sea. This resulted in carving a number of interesting land features, including what is now called Dry Falls, shown in the gallery. It looks roughly as though someone turned off the tap on Niagra Falls. In fact, it apparently would dwarf Niagra Falls, if the water were flowing. Downstream of the falls are miles of boulder strewn fields, full of the rocks deposited there by the water, and as a result, no good for farming. I guess this is used as ranch land.
And finally, night fall presents an opportunity for viewing big open skies, and lots of stars. The moon is almost new just now, so you can see it set for an hour or two after sunset. The photo I took below used a very long exposure, and unfortunately results in a blurred moon as the moon moves during the course of the exposure. Still, I liked the shot, so I included it.
