Columbia River, east of the Cascades
The Columbia River can be a place of extremes. It connects the dry sagebrush steppe of eastern Oregon and Washington with the moist temperate rainforest on the west coast by slicing through the Cascade Range. The walls of the river valley show evidence of repeated ancient lava flows and immense glacial floods.
Although we can see from the lack of vegetation on the hillsides that this area must receive little annual rainfall, we traveled through rain showers nearly all day. By late afternoon the rain stopped, the clouds lifted and we were out on deck to mark our passage through Wallula Gap. Along the way we caught a glimpse of this small, ephemeral waterfall.
