Views of Sequim, the Olympic Peninsula. . .and beyond
Here’s a novelty. Remember when you could find phone booths here and there? There was no cell phone reception at Sun Lakes State Park. Nice of them to provide an option though I couldn’t check my email on it. Forget Google.
We didn’t spend a lot of time at Sun Lakes State Park looking for wildlife. But there was a bird persistently chirping and hopping from branch to branch as we sat near a lake. As far as I can tell this is a woodpecker, probably a downy woodpecker, but I’m a rank amateur when it comes to birds.
I did readily identify other wildlife. Mosquitoes. Swarms of them, following us. They even came out of our trailer cabinet a day or two after we left Sun Lakes. It was like Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds” on a miniature level.
The days were already growing warmer when we stayed at Sun Lakes State Park last month. As we drove some of the backroads we discovered a number of small lakes that peppered the landscape like little jewels. The relief from the dry landscape was palpable. This is Deep Lake.
People fished and enjoyed the lakes in little inflatables as well as canoes and kayaks. The views were stunning.
We camped in and explored Sun Lakes State Park for a couple of days last month. While the region is a classic desert landscape – think sage and coyote bush – the park has many small lakes. A couple are within walking distance of the campgrounds. Others, which I’ll share tomorrow, are reached by unpaved backroads and are worth the drive.
This is a view from Sun Lakes State Park, just south of Dry Falls in Washington State’s Grand Coulee. I could name many places throughout the southwestern U.S. as well as desert regions of California where you could see scenery like this. Yet I was still in Washington. Pacific Northwesterners don’t have to travel great distances to get a desert fix.
This is a closer look at the basalt formations of this region. Although the Cascade Mountains to the west of here are a volcanic chain, the basalt flows that form this landscape originated east of here millions of years ago in an area around today’s Lewiston, WA. The area is rife with these basalt pillars. The lower more defined part of the pillars are called colonades. The upper portion is called an entablature. Each is a product of the speed at which the basalt cooled.
Grand Coulee was the destination of our recent trip east of the Cascades. We were on a low key geologic pilgrimage to explore the features of this fascinating area where a significant part of Washington State’s formation is laid bare.
Dry Falls, above, is a broad illustration of volcanic forces and ice age flows that formed today’s dramatic landscape. Over three miles wide, the falls was the site of catastrophic flooding at the end of the last ice age when a massive ice dam burst northeast of this region. It is estimated that the water flows through the Grand Coulee and Dry Falls was ten times the current flows of all the rivers in the world today. It has carved out a region of basalt volcanic cliffs and bluffs peppered with small lakes. I’ll show you more of the region over the next couple of days.
It’s the season of cruise ships. More precisely, it’s time for the parade of cruise ships that sail back and forth to Alaska. They sail through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, stopping at Port Angeles to pick up or drop off a pilot. Some days you can see three or four at once. Locals call them the cruise ship races. So far we haven’t seen anyone water skiing behind these babies.