I’m baaaaaaack!

Had a wonderful time out in eastern (really central, but everything on the other side of the Cascades is eastern, as far as I’m concerned) Washington. Stayed with our dear friends the Drollman’s and got a major education in the geology of the region Turns out most of Washington’s interior is a product of a) gigantic multiple lava flows from a hot spot that used to be under Idaho and is now under Yosemite (look out, world, when it blows again) and b) gigantic multiple floods from when a colossal lake (comparable to one of the Great Lakes) covering much of Idaho and Montana suddenly emptied in roughly two days when the ice dam holding it back would periodically melt during the last ice age. The volume of water is hard to imagine. Grand Coulee is several miles wide and Dry Falls is a roughly four hundred foot drop. When the floods occurred, the Coulee was *full* and the falls weren’t so much falls as a sort of dimple in the stream. Staggering.

And it happened multiple times.

In one of our adventures, we stopped at Blue Lake, rented some boats, and rowed to the other side. Then my pal Mike and his son Isaac scrambled up a cliff face (I tried, but decided to choose life instead) and went off in search of the famed Blue Lake Rhino. It’s a cave formed by a rhinoceros buried in a lava flow. It’s up about 125 feet above the lake and still a couple of hundred feet below the top of the cliff. They eventually found it and Isaac climbed inside. Then Mike got about halfway in and proclaimed himself “Rhino Proctologist” (you climb in through the rhino’s butt). One of the coolest fossil finds in the world.

We also hit Grand Coulee Dam of course, one of the most awesome things ever built by man. Enough concrete to girdle the earth twice. It’s hard to take in the scale of the thing. Also had pizza at the local restaurant bearing the legend “Best Pizza by a Dam Site.”

The drive home was especially glorious. Along about midnight, high atop the Columbia Plateau, it gets *pitch* dark. Not a soul around for miles and zero light pollution. I pulled the car over and we got out to do some star gazing. I have never *ever* seen the Milky Way as clear as it was that night. The moon had set, there was not a cloud in the sky and it was stretched over us like a magnificent tent from east to west and pole to pole. I felt… small. “What is man that you are mindful of him? The son of man that you care for him?”

Lots more to tell, and that’s just a taste. Glorious fun and much needed.

I will blog a few things, but I’ve also got The Backlog to deal with.

Oh! And I met my reader Dr. Thomas Tucker and his lovely wife. He is an oncologist whose services I am happy to report I did not require. Wonderful people! One of the pleasures of travel is that I keep bumping into various folks who read the blog!