Yes, we are visiting Dry Falls State Park today, and we can confirm that the falls are dry. In the picture above, we see the flat rim where the water of the ancient Columbia River once roared off the edge and down 400 feet. It must have been spectacular! In the visitor center, there is a film with a computer-generated animation of how it must have looked. But the Columbia River was re-routed thousands of years ago by a huge ice-age flood that formed all the coulees we are enjoying. So now we can look down-stream to see where the roaring river used to flow.
The only water here now are the clear spring-fed lakes that lay up and down the road on this stretch of the highway. In the picture below you can also see Denisa standing up on the observation point, separated from the rest of the wall of the coulee.
Just a mile down the road is another Washington State Park--Sun Parks. We started out on a trail beside Deep Lake on a beautiful morning.
We haven't had a flower picture in a while, and this bee was certainly enjoying the tall purple flowers along the trail.
Mark scrambled up on one of the large rock haystacks along the trail to get a better view down the narrow lake. You can see Denisa far below on the trail in the bottom center of the picture. We were both sweating with temperatures in the upper 80's on a trail with no shade.
That's when we decided that it would be a lot cooler (in more than one way) to kayak down Deep Lake, rather than hike beside it. We were glad that we always have our inflatable kayak in the car with us, so it only took about ten minutes to get on the water beside those tall black coulee walls.
People without boats were staying close to the parking lot end of the lake. You can see the big splash as another person jumps into the water from the natural rock ledge. The water gets very deep very quickly here at Deep Lake--perfect for jumping in from the edge.
That water is cool and clear, and a beautiful blue-green color. The ranger said that Deep Lake is about 125 feet deep. For a narrow little channel lake, that seems crazy deep to us.
From her seat at the front of the boat, Denisa kept taking pictures of the massive walls of rock that we were floating beside. But a picture like the one below just doesn't have anything to show the scale of its size.
So Mark dropped Denisa off on one side of this narrow lake, so she could take a picture of him in front of the coulee wall. Here's a picture of him rowing the kayak by himself so you'll know what to look for in the picture as he gets further away.
You can still see our two-man kayak in the water in front of that tall rock face as he gets further away.
But it's really hard to see that 12-foot boat in the picture below. We promise it's still there, but Mark is feeling and looking very small.
There were several other kayakers on Deep Lake this morning, and it was fun to try to picture them as they rowed beside these tall cliffs.
The winds were kicking up, and pushing us easily north along Deep Lake. There are three bright kayaks in the picture below, but they are so dwarfed by the beauty around them they are hard to see. Our fellow kayakers were warning us that it got windier around the curve, and it was really hard to row back against the wind. But of course, we weren't about to quit before we got to the end of the lake.
So we continued to let the wind drift us easily to the end. There we snapped a picture of a couple in a canoe, getting ready to turn around and face the wind for the two miles back to our cars.
We got a good arm workout, as it took continuous rowing just to keep the kayak from going backwards. We were secretly racing the other canoe back to the finish line, even though we were on the opposite edge of the lake so they didn't know it.
But we got distracted when we saw that swallows had built nests on the walls of the coulees. Right above our heads, we could see these little art masterpieces that were swallow nests.
Wherever there was a little rock overhang, there would be a swallow nest under it. They blended in well with the rock wall, and we tried to convince ourselves that we were glad the wind was slowing us down so we noticed them. But our arms were getting tired from the struggle with the wind, and stopping to take pictures meant we were losing the race.
We found a little cove with some protection from the wind. The birds must also like this cove, as we spotted a heron, and then an osprey in a tree.
It's hard to see the osprey in the picture above, so we'll zoom in on him. With the phone on the camera, the images aren't crisp, but he was posing on top of the dead branches for us.
We are totally losing our imaginary race against the canoe as we stopped to watch the osprey. He let us float into the base of his tree before he finally decided to take to the air and fly to another perch.
It was a great float on Deep Lake, and the wind helped us get everything dry so we could load our Sea Eagle kayak back into the car. We are driving further south now, watching the beautiful coulee walls and the clear blue lakes that share the valley floor with the highway.
Our destination is 16 miles south to a unique place--Soap Lake. We had to wade into the water to experience for ourselves why it got its name. Sure enough, the water was slick just like it was soapy bathwater. The ranger explained that this alkaline lake evaporates so much liquid that it leaves a high concentration of minerals in the water that is left.
We had heard that people come from miles away to experience the spa-like treatment of a day at Soap Lake. We saw people soaking in the shallow mineral water. We also saw others smearing the black mud from the lake bed all over their bodies. When Denisa approached, this group of Asian ladies met her to share their treasured lake mud. Since they didn't speak English, our only "conversation" was an outstretched muddy arm.
This is what the miracle mud looks like. This time it's probably a good thing we don't have smell-a-blog, because it smells even worse than it looks.
Denisa's not one to pass up an expensive spa treatment for free, so she began lathering it on her arm. The mud goes on easily and dries quickly.
She tried an experiment, covering only her left arm and leg. This way we could compare the miraculous effects with the un-mudded right side.
The black mud dries quickly to a gray that has the texture and color of an African elephant. It smells a lot like that elephant as well. So far this fancy spa treatment isn't as glamorous as she had hoped.
After baking in the mud for a while, she used the soapy water of Soap Lake to wash it off. The experiment's results were a little inconclusive, so it didn't warrant another trip to Soap Lake to mud up the other side. She couldn't wait to get home to bathe properly, as the smell was quite persistent even after rinsing in the lake.
We were a little disappointed with the town of Soap Lake, even though we enjoyed getting to buy more local cherries and apricots at the grocery store there. The neatest part of town was this beautiful sculpture on the lake shore. That outstretched eagle wing is actually the dial on this sun dial that shows it is 3:40 in the afternoon.
So we end another day of exploring the lakes and coulees around our camping spot in Coulee City. We hadn't planned to kayak in Deep Lake or get muddy at Soap Lake. We love the unexpected experiences that we wander into as we wander His wonders.
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