One of the greatest joys of travel is the unexpected discovery. We came to this part of the world to explore the Columbia and Snake Rivers. In the last three days, we have found great beauty and much of interest, from the spectacular depths of Hells Canyon, to the story of Lewis and Clark.
Today, we visited the little known Palouse River. A small flow, with its headwaters in nearby Idaho, the Palouse travels through a deep and wide canyon which is far out of proportion to the tiny river. Upriver, we walked around Palouse Falls State Park, where the water trickled over the cliff's edge into a huge plunge pool, again, far out of proportion to volume of water.
Not only were we immersed in striking scenery on a lovely sunny morning, we were in the middle of a landscape that was shaped by the greatest floods in recorded geologic history. Towards the end of the last ice age, tongues of glacial ice repeatedly dammed the Clark Fork River in what is now Montana, creating massive lakes, rivaling the Great Lakes in size. These ice dams gave way, unleashing torrents estimated to be equal to ten times the flow of all of the water in all of the rivers in the world.
Upon our return to the Sea Bird, we enjoyed a barbecue lunch on deck.
