MEMORIAL DAY TRIP TO DRY FALLS (Web Page)

Our Memorial Day trip to Eastern Washington was nice. We had warm weather all the way on Monday. I actually left home wearing a tank top and jeans. By the time we arrived at Moses Lake seven hours later I was wearing shorts with my tank top. We had a great visit with relatives.

We headed home on Wednesday morning. Late morning found us at Dry Falls in Eastern Washington where we took a bunch of pictures. There is an observatory there and we were able to go up into it and get some really good views of the Dry Falls. They also have a Visitor Interpretive Center managed by the Washington State Parks Service.

There we were able to learn more about how the Dry Falls were created during the last of the Ice Ages 12,000- 17,000 years ago. Glacial Lake Missoula which covered most of the area known as Western Montana., overflowed its ice dam. The evidence shows that glaciers advanced and blocked the Clark Fork River as many as 85 times in the last 16,000 years creating the large lake.

The last time the lake was formed it's sudden draining produced the last and greatest flood. (12,000- 17,000 years ago). Ice Age Floods thundering with torrents of water, ice, and earth roared across the Northwest, rushing down the Columbia River drainage, across northern Idaho and eastern and central Washington, through the Columbia River Gorge, back up into Oregon's Willamette Valley, and finally poured into the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River. All the while carving new canyons, creating monstrous waterfalls, and instantly transforming the face of the land.

Scientist estimated the flood waters were once 300 feet above your head. The eroded canyon is 3.5 miles wide and the small lakes are 400 feet below the rim, now. Compared to Niagara Falls which is one mile wide with a 165 foot drop from the rim! It is so hard to imagine that flood water could have traveled such great distance and carved such natural geographic wonders in these Northwest states- Montana, Idaho, Eastern and Central Washington, and Oregon.

Yet, such are the words of scientist J Harlen Bretz ~ "I could conceive of no geological process of erosion to make this topography except huge, violent rivers of glacial meltwater...It was a debacle which swept the Columbia Plateau." You can read and learn more about it here: http://www.nps.gov/iceagefloods.

~ Here are photos we took of Dry Falls ~

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Last Modified: 10-07-16 @ 6:39 pm EDT