Day trip to Palouse Falls

We didn't get out Saturday, so had to modify our plans to go to Kennewick, WA for a weekend trip and modified it to a day trip to Palouse Falls State Park and return via Clarkston, WA and Lewiston, ID which is really one city divided by a river (The Clearwater, I think). These cities are located near the spot where Lewis and Clark met Sacajawea. If you don't know who she is, you need to look her up. But before we get to the trip, here are this week's pictures of the healing fingers. Only one little scab left, then we will see how much scar tissue will remain. We had a beautiful day with some sunshine. That may be the last sunshine we see in Washington if the weather reports hold true. We headed to familiar Colfax just north of Pullman, then went southwest toward Walla Walla about 50 miles. We wound our way out of wheat country where the green fields of winter wheat were interspersed with the short amber wheat stubble. As the wheat fields diminished, more rugged terrain with sparce vegitation (much sagebrush) came into view with lots of cattle scattered on the hills. Tiny towns would crop up here and there. We did find a McDonald's in one little town. Fortunately Mapquest accurately guided us to the State Park, but we were beginning to wonder as we left the state highway and although we weren't in the mountains found ourselves winding back and forth on little serpentine roads. Then out in the middle of "nowhere" was a sign "Palouse Falls State Park". We crossed 2 cattle guards (again; if you don't know what they are, look them up.) We came up over a rise and there was a little parking lot. I went to the bathroom and saw the sign about local inhabitants. I didn't tell Georgia about it til we were leaving. We didn't see any. Probably too cold??? We walked down to the rail and OMG Would you believe this is sitting here in the middle of someone's "pasture field"??? I think they call it a range out here. The falls itself is 198 feet high, but appears to start about half-way up the wall of the cliff. The falls is the Palouse River dropping before it winds it's way to the Snake River about 6 miles away. The Snake joins the Columbia near Kennewick where we had planned to go on Saturday. To give ourselves the chance to see more different terrain, we chose to take the "long way" back to Pullman. Believe it or not, there about 20 miles from the park, we went through Starbuck, Washington. No green and black labels here. The only green we saw had a yellow deer on it. I doubt there is a latte in town. Then we hit US 12 which follows the Lewis and Clark trail to Clarkston. By the time we got to Clarkston, it was dark, so we didn't get to see as much of this town as we would have liked. We went across the river to Lewiston, Idaho, then climbed up out of the valley on 195 where we had had come down in August on our way through the Nez Perce reservation to Missoula, Montana. After we got to the top, the road straightened out and we went about 30 miles to Moscow where we had a great Pizza at Gambino's. Got one large enough that I will be eating pizza for lunch for 2 days. But really good pizza. Once we were in Moscow, we felt we were essentially "home" as it is only about 8 miles from there to our room. A short, but satisfying trip to see more of this beautiful creation called earth. Oh, then to top it off, on PBS last nite, we say "Cloud, Stallion of the Arrowhead Mountains". Pretty interesting since we just came across the Montana Rockies last week and saw free ranging horses.