Eastern Washington Tri-Cities Loop Tour

Sunday morning, June 10, we set out on a three day trip to the Tri-Cities area (Richland, Pasco and Kennewick), about 200 miles southwest of Farragut. This area is very interesting both geologically and historically. The area where the ancient floods from the Glacial Lake Missoula swept to the Pacific is generally known as the Palouse.

 

PALOUSE FALLS STATE PARK

These falls and the canyon downstream are an important feature of the channeled scablands created by the great Missoula floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington and across the Columbia River Plateau. The falls were created when the Missoula floods overtopped the south valley wall of the ancestral Palouse River, diverting it to the current course to the Snake River by erosion of a new channel.

Palouse Falls at 980 feet tall is the

State Falls of Washington.

The canyon downstream of the Palouse Falls.

Yellow Bellied Marmots inhabit the

rim of the Canyon

 

THE MANHATTAN PROJECT NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK

This was formally the Hanford Engineer Works. It was built to create large quantities of plutonium at the 600 square mile site along the Columbia River in southeastern Washington. This is now a National Historic Park. Our tour included a 50 mile bus ride and an extensive guided tour of the B Reactor. The plutonium produced by this reactor was used to fuel the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945.

B Reactor Building

One of our two tour guides.

B Reactor was active 1944-1968.

The Reactor is composed of

2004 aluminum tubes into which

the uranium slugs are inserted

from which the plutonium is created.

Close up of some of the tubes.

The reactor was water-cooled, with cooling water pumped

from the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River

through the aluminum tubes around the

uranium slugs at the rate of 75,000 gallons per minute.

 

COUNTRY MERCANTILE IN PASCO, WASHINGTON

Family owned mercantile, selling homemade preserves, candy, spices, baked goods, and home grown produce.

Quite the Operation

Our lunch for the day was splitting one of these apples.

 

LENORE CAVES STATE PARK

The Lenore Caves were formed by the plucking of basalt from the walls of the coulees by the rush of melt waters and are geologically different from most caverns. They were later used as shelters by prehistoric man.

Lake Lenore

The Lenore Caves are a series of

overhangs along the cliffs at the lake

accessed by a hiking trail.

Spring flowers lined the trail.

 

DRY FALLS STATE PARK

Dry Falls is 3.5-mile-long ancient waterfall created when ancient Glacial Lake Missoula burst its ice dam. It is estimated that the falls were five times the width of Niagara, with ten times the flow of all the current rivers in the world combined. 

Dry Falls Lake, accessible by a moderately rough

gravel road, sits at the foot of Dry Falls.

View point from the Visitors Center at the Rim.

The Dry Falls are located about 25 miles south of

Grand Coulee Dam