Palouse Falls

In one of my previous posts I shared images from a 2016 trip to south east Washington area surrounding the town of Walla Walla and in particular the views from Steptoe Butte in the Palouse region. The first part of the trip though was a campout at Palouse Falls State Park. The campground itself is very bare bones, beautifully located at the rim of the canyon overlooking the nearly 200ft waterfall. Eleven primitive sites, pit toilets, no running water, no cell reception. Just sage, basalt, and the constant roar of the falls below.The canyon itself was carved by the Missoula Floods at the end of the last ice age - an ice dam broke in Montana and emptied a lake the size of Lake Erie across eastern Washington in a matter of days. The basalt walls you see were stripped bare by water moving at highway speeds. Hard to imagine standing on the rim now, with the Palouse River a thin ribbon at the bottom.We spent the afternoon walking the rim, scouting angles for sunset. The view downstream…