Wild Horse Monument and Ancient Lakes

A gorgeous weekend needed a hike!
Last Sunday, Hannah and a couple of her friends, Jenelle and I took off for a day of hiking around.
We stopped the Wild Horse Monument just outside of Vantage.
A steep hike up (that felt even steeper going down) gave us beautiful panoramic views of the Columbia River.

photo by Hannah

Next we drove to a place called Ancient Lakes.
It's an amazing place that was created during cataclysmic floods after the ice age.
The massive basalt columns were once solid lava flows called a coulee.
The current landscape is a result of those flows being eroded by the ancient glacial floods.
After walking a long way across dry ancient lake beds, we came to the area where there are still lakes being fed by a waterfall.
It was such a contrast.
Dry desert landscape with a waterfall right in the middle.

The girls wanted to hike closer to the waterfall.
So I took their gear and walked around the other side so that I could watch as they explored.
It's very hard to give perspective with a camera to how large this area is.
This picture is a zoom of them while they traversed the rocks toward the base of the waterfall.

And this picture is what I saw with my eyes.
If you look dead center...right above the grasses around the lake, you can see four tiny people.

And they made it!!
(See Jenelle in the pink shirt to the right of the waterfall?)

After this picture, Hannah and her friends stayed here and ate their lunch

Jenelle and I walked further and hung out for a while.
We had all pretty much run out of water (should have brought a couple of bottles each!) and Jenelle was dead on a rock...

 ...or was she???

I took a few more pictures of the beautiful scenery...

 (It's actually a triple waterfall!)

...and when the girls caught up with us, we were all ready to go!
We had a long walk ahead!

Once we made it around this last column, we knew the parking lot was close.

It was a long day and a much longer walk than we expected, but once everyone was replenished with water, everyone agreed it was fun!

At the same time we were out, Ivan and Donald were having their own adventure!
They hiked an area off the Yakima River called Umtanum Creek Canyon.
Donald took this awesome picture of Ivan pointing at a cairn (man made stack of rocks) they made on top of a hill.
I've enlarged these pictures, but you still have to look very closely to see the rocks.  The cairn is at the very top of the hill and Ivan is near the bottom for the picture.

My goal this summer is to take advantage of this amazing place we live and get outside as much as possible!!