Once I got south of Banks Lake I found myself at Dry Falls State Park. This is kind of a mini Grand Canyon. It is quite large (you are only seeing about a third of it) and deep, and was yet another surprise I found on the road today. You’ll be seeing another picture taken here, hopefully tomorrow.
These cliffs ran almost the entire 30 mile length of Banks Lake in northeast Washington State.
Banks Lake is a huge recreational lake and these folks were taking full advantage of a beautiful day.
Not all the photo ops at Banks Lake were looking towards the lake. This was just off the road to my left as I was traveling south along the eastern edge of the lake. If you don’t believe me I can send you a picture including the guardrail which I am standing right in front of.
The top picture is looking back towards the swimming hole featured in the next post. The two guys I saw there were in the lower right corner of this picture, near the road.
The lower picture is of Steamboat Rock, for which the State Park is named. These were taken at Banks Lake in northeast Washington State.
This is one of the advantages of driving on scenic roads. After spending several days on prairie land and in mountains, this was the opening act of what turned out to be more than an hour driving adjacent to Banks Lake, which is home to Steamboat Rock State Park in Washington State.
Yesterday’s drive in central Idaho, while pleasant, frankly got kind of boring. The southward leg was nice, but when I started heading east towards Missoula, Montana it was over 100 miles of a stream running parallel to the highway, a winding road with a 50 mile per hour speed limit (and no guardrail!). Picturesque, but repetitive. At this point today’s drive got anything but boring.
The guy in the water (who was walking very gingerly on the rocks below the water’s surface) was waiting for his buddy who was up in the rocks to the right negotiating his way to the rock on the far right where he would jump into the water. Fun, but risky.
Then I started driving alongside a huge lake with a rocky cliff rising along the left side of the road. The lake brought many nice views and photo opportunities with various rock formations in the distance.
Today’s journey took me north of Spokane, Washington (which is not far west of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho) on two scenic roads, Rte 20 which I took east to west up near the Canadian border, and Rtes 155 and 17 which proceed south from the town of Omak, Washington.
After driving for hours through dry, brown prairie land it was like a dream entering town on this lush, tree-lined street in Coulee Dam, Washington. It is just north of the Grand Coulee Dam which is just south of the Colville Indian Reservation (one of the largest I’ve driven through).
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