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Looking upstream near the mouth of the Palouse R. in Lyon's Ferry State Park. The diked off lagoon is Marmes, where the oldest human remains in N. America were found. The dike was to protect the cave when water backed up behind Lower Monumental Dam, but it seeped through fissures in the basalt and flooded the site. |
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Drive up the hill & you get a panorama of some of the channeled scablands. Palouse Falls State Park is centrally located, so I'll park there again. |
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Just a short distance from the park which is off to the right. The falls is at the far end of this channel |
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Let's head NW up this coulee |
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Eeny meeny miny mo, which way do I want to go. Dry lakes to the
right, water to the left.
Go left, & work toward high ground |
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A tree in someone's yard. Must be the richest folks in the neighborhood. Shade, shelter and |
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.a view of the lake. It's half a mile long and 50 feet wide when it's full. It must be spring fed, as it never goes dry, even though it's low in the hot months. There is no visible outlet except evaporation, but there is a spring about a mile & a half SE that may come from here. The lake is not alkali & it has fish in it. |
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I disturbed the slumber of these mule deer. They kept moving ahead of me going the same direction I was. I detoured through the saddle on the left so they could settle down. |
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How about that. More canyons. |
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This odd looking basalt is one of the highest points on the plateau. The ice age flood that exposed this had to surge across 6 miles of rising ground to get here. |
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some isolated flowers |
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This patch of flowers covered nearly an acre |
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This is what passes for an intersection out here. |
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I don't know what he is, but there were about 2 dozen of |
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these inch long beetles in this one bush and new arrivals showed up while I took these pictures. |
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They were the only ones I saw all afternoon. |
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This is looking in the direction the floods came from |
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I told you there was water out here. |
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Deep Lake. And judging from the banks, it is aptly named. The coulee rises in both directions from the lake. |
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That coulee points straight to where I parked. Unfortunately,
you can't get there from here.
We can drop off the rim about a mile from the left edge of the picture
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Then follow this draw to the right and we'll be at the end of the channel from Deep Lake. |
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The park is just over there |
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Palouse Falls from the vista at the park. It's a 200 foot drop. And 5 miles to Marmes site at Lyons Ferry. |