Washington has a state waterfall

...And we went to see it for a quick overnight camping trip.

The eastern side of Washington (over the Cascade mountains) looks and feels completely different from the western side. It's dry and hot in the summer, much colder over there in the winter too. There's a lot of agriculture - apples, pears, cherries, hay and some beef cows, with some other things mixed in too (like wine grapes). And it's a lot of big, wide open space.

I'd heard about Palouse Falls (Washington's state waterfall!) last summer on a work trip to Spokane. Someone mentioned that it was close-ish...but I couldn't take a side trip in a state vehicle and by then it was too hot to visit there anyways. But we headed there this weekend; the highs in Olympia are only in the mid 50s to mid 60s, the temperatures over there are in the mid 80s during the day (and 40-50 at night).  It's about 4 hours from Olympia, so it's not exactly close.

We took I90 there then looped home via a southern route. This (above) is the Columbia River/Wanapum Lake where the interstate crosses. We stopped an Ginko Petrified Forest State Park, which is right off the interstate on the river. Did you know that petrified wood is Washington's state gem?  Me neither.

At the park there's a lot of petroglyphs that were saved from the rising water when the river was dammed and relocated to the park.

Palouse Falls is spectacular. It's in the middle of nowhere, yet there were a lot of people there. There's ~10 rustic campsites all crammed on a grassy spot next to the parking lot, but this is the view just a few steps down from the parking lot:

That's 180 feet of gushing rive plummeting over a cliff face.

An cliff face is where this family of marmots liked to hang out.

There's a bunch of informal (unauthorized?) hiking trails all over the area. We walked to an overlook of the top of the falls. If you're nuts you can follow a tiny footpath along a narrow ledge to the pool at the bottom of the falls (nope, not for me!).

This 'mohawk' of rock was pretty cool. The view of top of the waterfall is from below the far end of the mohawk, so the big hole to the lower right in the picture is where the pool of the waterfall is located.

 Looking downstream from one of the rims.

 Not much of a colorful sunset, but the pattern of the clouds was interesting.

Finally, two more pictures of the falls...Steve with the mohawk in the background.

And technically this is a selfie since our (intentional) shadows are seen on the cliff!

So the verdict: really cool place, worth the drive!