PALOUSE
First stop on our trip to Canada for Christmas vacation: Palouse Falls in eastern Washington. Nothing really special about this photo. The light was not great when we arrived, and so I did not take much time here and I did not seek out great compositions of the waterfall. I already have some really good shots of this waterfall with amazing light, so mainly I just wanted to come here to see this 186 ft high beauty again. It is only about 20 miles out of our way on our trip to BC.
Our trip to Canada this year started out with a bang. A bang of a winter storm, I mean. Usually we would travel up I-5 through the Mt. Shasta area and then through central Oregon. However, this year our trip co-incided with a whopper of a winter storm coming through northern California. The Shasta area was forecast to receive 13 feet of snow over a 3 day period, and we would be traveling right through it. Yes I did say 13 feet! I am not sure how much they actually received, but I know the Tahoe area got about 8 feet over that same weekend. I figured I-5 would be closed for sure and it would be pointless or suicide to attempt to drive up there that weekend. I decided on an alternate route, driving through Reno NV instead. It was only about 70 miles longer, but actually it probably took the exact same amount of time to travel this route then it would to go the other way due to the conditions. The only difficult spot would be traveling over the Donner Summit on the I-80, but we did receive a bit of help from God as well, as He delayed the storm hitting the Tahoe area (just for us, I am sure).
The storm did not start to barrage the Tahoe area until Friday afternoon, though it was scheduled to start much earlier Friday morning. We got up at 2AM on Saturday morning, I checked the road conditions, and we headed out. There was chain control over I-80 as expected, but we had no troubles making it over the Donner pass with our four wheel drive vehicle. There was lots of snow to be sure, but the sailing was smooth as silver. Yet we found out later, only a few hours after we passed, they closed the I-80 for the rest of that day. If that storm had started on time as scheduled, we would not have made it through.
The rest of that day was only slightly eventful, and it did involve driving through a sand storm in eastern Oregon. I must say, I have never experienced anything like that before. My wife Tara was driving at the time, and visibility was extremely low. It was interesting to say the least, but we made it through, driving through five states that day before stopping to rest at Richland WA for the night. Order of business in Richland is always to hit Chuck E Cheese for dinner. Not my choice of course. Not my wife’s choice. I guess you can figure out who picks dinner in our family when we are in Richland WA.
The next morning we drive through eastern Washington and on up to British Columbia. It is a much shorter day, and we have time to take it easy. For my wife, that means stopping to shop in Spokane. For me, it means stopping at Palouse Falls. The weather forecast called for cloudy skies, but it was rather sunny when we arrived. We walked around the park a bit, and finally the clouds came in slightly to cover the sun somewhat, allowing me to get at least a halfway decent shot of this amazing waterfall. Ok, Leon is happy. Now let’s get to Spokane to make Tara happy as well. It was a good start to our trip.