Road Trip! Zooming deeper into Coulee Country in the Scablands of the Columbia River Basin, Monday 18 January 2010.

Lake Wenatchee in the Cascade Mountains on a beautifully gloomy day as more storms roll in this Sunday the 17th of  January 2010.

My oldest child, Morgan Hannah years before she became Dylan Blair, as she strides thru the icy edges of the Potholes Reservoir Lakes, Monday the 18th of January 2010. She’s 15 still, only two months shy of turning the Big 16.

Me, her Dad, at the River House on the Upper Wenatchee. In good spirits, too, as I love road trips & being outdoors. I’m only 50 here. Gosh, be 51 years in about 3 months. Foto by Morgan/Dylan. Sunday 17 January 2010.

Emerald Isle, Lake Wenatchee, Lake Wenatchee State Park. Sunday 17 January 2010. It’s a cold, cold late afternoon as dusk approaches.

Enjoyed a few family picnics by here by the lake in bygone times with Gwen, Kristina, & our kids.

Winter scenes from Lake Wenatchee State Park, Sunday 17 January 2010.

Emerald Isle, winter gem of Lake Wenatchee.

Rootball on a snowy beach.

Picnics of Trees and Ghosts.

Once upon a time I paddled a sit-on-top kayak out to this little island.

Oh, a snow…a snow what? A human duck?

Looking up the lake from the beach at the state park. Nason Ridge is on picture-left in the clouds while the mountains on picture-right remain out of sight.

One weird companion.

We both love snowy beaches!

We weren’t the only ones either! And that’s Daddy William standing to the left of the others facing Morgan/Dylan the photographer.

Lake Wenatchee, Washington.

Playing on the Beach! Dad by Morgan/Dylan. Adding to an unfinished igloo-style wall of snow blocks. Sunday the 17th of January 2010.

Foto of by a teenage daughter of her middle-aged father. Oh yeah, wacky family relationship dynamics, woo HOO hooty HOO!

Dad again.

Uplake…

Snow Love!

YAY! Snow People!

Do you like my long-haired crew cut?

¡LOL!

Intimacy.

Morgan, who now goes by Dylan, at the River House we lost in the Great Global Recession. My then-now-ex-wife Kristina and I were in a prolonged short-sell process with this beautiful home plus our Yellow Dragonfly House back in Seattle. Love & miss what Kristina & I once shared. We’d planned to leave this house to our children & any future grandchildren. This day, however, we left Lake Wenatchee State Park, drove down the Chumstick Highway to the village of Plain, turned onto River Road, kept going, and then way down into Mule Tail Flats where our house was located. I would often visit to check on the property. Sunday afternoon on the 17th off January 2010.

My oldest daughter.

MHHB/DBHB

William Dudley Bass at the Upper Wenatchee River outside Plain. Foto by his daughter MHHB.

Evil Willy!

¡HA!

Done yet?

Sheeesh, LOL! Well, shoot me up while I’m still alive & jolly! Gosh, now y’all can see my teeth!

OK, gotta go, ho ho ho!

Ahhh, OK, a few more pictures, then!

Look, I’m a turtle head!

Again? OK, here’s another.

Last one today. My daughter took this foto of me.

Charlie Brown unbowed.

Zombie Gloves! Impromptu snow art.

The Wenatchee River at low water as it flows past our River House.

Home, or what was our front yard.

Bluzzy Skreen Shot of Morgan before Dylan, Goofin’ with Goofy Dad.

Saying goodbye to the dream house lost in the Great Recession. Here’s the front or western-facing side of our River House from the north side. The rear of the house faces east to the river. Mid-January 2010. 

We head east then north towards Chelan. Powerlines advance over the hills reminding of scenes from an old black & white science fiction movie where armies of titanic metal robots marched across barren landscapes.

Pulled into a scenic overlook to use restroom facilities. Oh my goodness, they were unexpectedly gross with skin-shriveling, cringey-gooey, skuppooey porta-potty toilets. Random piles of garbage littered the rest stop and the gruesome corpses of dead animals, all kinds, birds, dogs, cats, deer, even a creepy cow thangy were scattered around the parking lot. Twas a poisoned land where ignorant people truly don’t know the meaning of choosing to give a frakkin shit about anything except misplaced notions of feeling they are free to do whatever the hell they want without any responsibility or concern for others. Overwhelmed, we got back in our minivan and headed on towards the lights of Chelan.

Sunset unseen this Sunday night on the 17th of January 2010.

Just after 17:00 this Sunday evening.

Still dark at 7:45 in the morning on Monday the 18th of January 2010. Morgan & I had driven thru much of the night and ended up at the Dry Falls Visitor Center where we slept inside the minivan. We’d removed the middle & rear seats so we could place our camping pads & sleeping bags. Kept the minivan windows cracked for fresh air. The temperatures fell down into the teens. Across the way shined lights from the small town of Coulee City. Dry Falls Heritage Area with Sun Lakes-Dry Falls State Park form a majestic realm to explore any time of the year.

Winter Sunrise over Dry Falls in the Channeled Scablands. It’s still 9 in the morning.

Dawn over the Scablands, January 2010.

Difficult to imagine the scope and scale of the great Missoula or Bretz Ice Age Floods. They swept across vast lava plateaus and river valleys for 50 to 60 year intervals across nearly 2K years some 13K to 15K years ago. Wow! These enormous deluges swept across parts of Southern Canada and the American states of Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. The sun rises upon the prehistoric plunge pools below Dry Falls.

Looking down towards Sun Lakes.

This southwestern appendix of Dry Falls Lake appears completely frozen over this cold, cold Monday morning on 18 January 2010.

The Sun comes.

Well…trying to come, anyway.

The scars of long-ago cataclysms reveal more mysteries.

William Bass gazing out over the cliff’s edge at the Dry Falls Visitor Center, Monday 18 January 2010. Foto by Morgan/Dylan.

Dry Falls and the plunge pool lake below. We stare in awe as the rising sun reveals more and more of these immense geological and hydrological features.

Wouldn’t want to walk out on the frozen lake below or climb up those crumbly cliffs.

The cliffs of the prehistoric waterfalls plunge down for nearly 120 meters or 400 feet in places.

Just after 9:30 and the Sun keeps rising over the canyon shadows.

Oh, I’m usually not much on selfies, …

…but these two turned out OK. Sure is cold, too, and, hey, it’s January and we slept on the floor of our minivan with the seats removed.

Sol continues to rise to cross the sky, altho “AquaTerra” is but a small planet revolving around our modest yellow star.

Old trails and paths begin to appear…

More and more paths and old roads reveal themselves.

Long ways down.

Aye, really steep!

Morgan & I choose not to hike down this steep, trippy trail this frigid morning. We wanted to drive towards Coulee City and eat breakfast at a roadside diner we ate at once or twice before when she was a tot. During Labor Day Weekend of 1994, when Morgan was a little over 6 months old, Gwen & I day hiked down this dangerous trail from the roadside Visitor Center to the bottom. I carried Baby Mo in a Snugli strapped to the front of my torso. Gwen breastfed our baby girl at the bottom where we stood in a grove of brush and tall grass by the lakeshore. All felt so prehistoric then. Still does. Could only imagine the awe and the terror of those early humans who experienced these gigantic Ice Age floods.

Looking back. The precipice cliffs of Dry Falls extends for about 5.5 kilometers or 3.5 miles in length. At the height of these gigantic floods this immense waterfall was up to 4, even 5 times as wide as today’s Niagara Falls. The roar of water and rock must have been immense. 

Dry Falls.

The future of prehistory.

Sunbeams break the shadows of dawn.

Morgan Hannah on the 18th of January nearly a decade before changing their name to Dylan Blair. And, yes, we both love to goof, LOL!

Only 15 years & 10 months along!

I just love this child of mine!

The road beckons.

Prehistoric cliffs crumbling over time & space to reveal the stories of primeval catastrophes when fire & ice & flood convulsed this region of the planet.

Looking back up this high, lonesome road where Dry Falls hides out of sight beyond the curve.

Looking south down the coulees into Sun Lakes State Park.

Our travelmobile, a Dodge Grand Caravan, for our Winter road trip thru the Channeled Scablands.

Life grows to live wherever it can. These tall grasses reminds me of dune grasses of my youth exploring the seashores of the Atlantic Southeast.

Down in the Sun Lakes area of the park.

Gazing back.

So much is happening in the stillness. Stillness radiates intensity.

Sky & rock & sage…

Happy at 10:22 in the morning sunshine.

Stirred by the Sun, a cloud creeps down the rocks as if alive.

Views up from Sun Lakes.

Uh Oh! Giving me that look! And in the brief shimmer of moments passing I recognize the facial signatures of various relatives in my teenage daughter’s face.

Wow, Lake Lenore is frozen over! The lake stretches for about 13 km or 8 miles thru Lenore Canyon, part of the larger Southern Coulee stretching from Dry Falls thru the Moses Lake area towards the Columbia River Gorge. We cruise along HWY 17 south from Sun Lakes State Park towards Soap Lake and pull over to view this frigid landscape of fire, ice, & flood. Monday 18 January 2010.

The lake is frozen, sure, but there is no way either one of us intends to walk out onto the ice. Lake Lenore is relatively shallow, and the water level is still way over the top of our heads.

Imagine basalt lava floods gushing from long tectonic fissures and fire fountains rather than volcanic mountains. Imagine plumes of toxic gases spewing from 3 to 11 km up into darkening sky. While these enormous basalt floods formed a plateau some 164K square km up to 3,500 m deep, this flood of magma turned lava turned basalt is dwarfed by even larger prehistoric basalt floods in what is today’s India and Siberia, among other place. These enormous emissions of fumes, gases, and smoke from burned areas affected climate and wildlife on a global level. Then imagine not all that long ago huge Ice Age dams breaking loose as vast lakes emptied out to inundate and scour these canyons, filling them up with raging floodwaters. Imagine the scale of these repetitive catastrophes. Wow.

Summer temperatures in the Scablands can reach well over 100° F in the summer and drop below 0°F in the winter months. Averages fluctuate from around 27 or 30°F to highs in the mid-80s to low-90s F, tho.

Morgan & I pushed on to Potholes State Park, about halfway between the towns of Moses Lake & Othello in the east-central part of Washington State. Monday 18 January 2010.

¡Precaución! And don’t walk out on the darn ice!

She’s gotta test it, tho!

Such wild, barren beauty.

Morgan/Dylan grinning away.

MHHB/DBHB

So many fish, frogs, and birds. And, eventually, sooner or later, Homo sapiens.

Bending over at the edge where the boat ramp dives underwater.

Time bends with space, and thus it’s time we bid farewell to this place.

On the road again! And we blast down small, wiggly roads and demonic straitaways into thick winter fog.

We drove from Potholes westward ho to Frenchman (also known as Frenchman’s) Coulee, a brachiated side canyon of the mighty Columbia River Gorge in the vicinity of the small towns & villages of Vantage, Quincey, and George, Washington. The Gorge Amphitheater, famous for its sunset concerts, is also nearby, as are old silica mines & random, ramshackle abandoned homesteads. Frenchman’s Coulee is also one of the top rock climbing sections in Washington. We feel as if we’ve reached the end of the world out here in the frosty, desert fog.

The Feathers await in stillness of fog. These basalt columns offer popular beginner to intermediate climbing routes, & I climbed out here often back in “my day.” Longer & more advanced routes exist nearby such as the Sunshine Wall, Fugs Wall, & many others with a mix of trad & sport climbing routes. We got out to explore a bit, but, hey, we’re on a road trip and need to get back home later this Monday night.

Old roads crisscross the coulees. People aren’t suppose to drive out there, tho some break thru old, dilapidated barbed wire fences. Lots to hike, however, and climb and explore. These cliffs we’re looking down are right near the edge of the old Vantage highway, perhaps too close. The remains of old cars and refrigerators lay wrecked at the bottom where mischief makers pushed or rolled them off the cliffs.

Aye, it’s a long way down.

Looking out across the coulee from the skinny ribbon of old, buckled asphalt road.

Looking down.

Zooming in…

...and in a little bit more. Our imaginations wondered about the stories these old wrecks tell. Eventually nature will break it all down, leaving behind only microplastics, perhaps. Civilizations fall and are swallowed up by their planets and stars with nothing left, nothing left at all, not even dust, not even songs, not even memories. Meanwhile, somewhere else, life & love & questions of boundaries and intimacy emerge anew. Perhaps.

Frenchman’s Falls across the way. The falls freeze during periods of unusually bitter cold and become one of the few places in Washington one can go ice climbing on frozen waterfalls. Most of the water running thru Frenchman’s, however, are polluted, agricultural runoffs from Columbia River irrigation projects. The rest arises from a few natural springs and caches from the little amount of rain & snow to precipitate across these semi-arid steppes & desert canyons.

The old road beckons, gravity bend time and the mind with it, so we move forward.

The old road deadends here on a giant bench carved out by ancient floods. We gaze into the stillness of Winter, feel the ache of cold in our bones, and sigh with relief upon getting back inside our nice, warm minivan. The road once traveled a bridge spanning the river when it was narrower, swirled with whitewater, and teemed with salmon. Then when hydroelectric dams were build everything changed. Even the fish.

The weight of the planet felt so heavy I kept wanting to walk up into the sky along the arching sweep to timegravity.

The road. Always the road. The journey. The journey is all ways. For roads and trails all come to an end. Directions change. Mountains rise and fall. Our journeys, however, go on forever, even beyond frontiers of memories.