Visit to Snake River Canyon

Spring Break is officially over...for Greg anyway! Due to weather, we didn't get to do any camping while he was on vacation, but we still managed to find plenty to do. Friday and Saturday turned out to be gorgeous weather days, so we squeezed in as much outdoor activity as possible in those two days. Today (Tuesday), we're back to snow. :(

Our first venture last week, was a trip to Spokane, WA on Wednesday. Spokane is a pretty good-size city and only about an hour and a half away from Pullman. We discovered an R.E.I. (outdoor rec/camping supply store) there, which is where we spent the majority of the day. Greg's mile-long Christmas wishlist grew another mile while we were in the store! Afterwards, we checked out one of the many malls for awhile. Our only purchase was the board game "Encore" which we recommend to anybody who likes board games. After the mall, we headed back to Pullman.

Friday's nice weather had us itching to get outside. First, we rode our bikes around town for some errands. Then, Dixie accompanied us to the tennis courts for awhile, where we played comfortably in t-shirts and shorts. After that, we rode our bikes to the gym for awhile.

Saturday was probably the best day of the entire break. Along with our friend Jenny - and her kayak - we loaded up in the truck and drove about 15 miles outside of Pullman to see the Snake River. A few miles outside of town, the terrain switched abruptly from the rolling fields, to a huge rocky canyon as we made the descent to the river. Greg finally received his wish to see some wildlife... over the course of the day, he spotted a pheasant, some whitetail deer, and some mule deer! The canyon and the river were pretty amazing though. Check out some of the pictures below!

First and foremost... we caught major flak for not having a picture of Dixie in our last post. So... just to prove to everyone that she is alive and well, I wanted to put her picture at the top of the list. The water was still a little too cold for her to play in, but I think she was just as thrilled as the rest of us to get out of the house! She is standing on the rockbar where we sat our chairs for the day.

Jenny let me take a whirl on her kayak, so the picture above was actually taken from the middle of the river, looking down the canyon. I wish I could make these photos larger, they look so much better when you can see more detail. Greg unfortunately did not get to take a turn on the kayak because Jenny's life jacket couldn't contain his broad shoulders and beefy chest. :)

There also happened to be a crew or rowing meet at this spot on the river Saturday. Both the WSU men's and women's rowing teams were flitting across the river right in front of us. It was pretty interesting to watch how synchronized they are.

Jenny and I each took a turn and paddled the width of the river. This was a small waterfall that was hidden in one of the coves on the opposite side of the river. The canyon wall was straight up and down on that side of the river.
It's difficult to see when the picture is this small, but that little green and black speck in the water is Jenny on her kayak. She is not even all the way across the river, and my camera is zoomed almost as far as it can go to capture this shot. It puts into perspective just how high the wall is on the other side of the river.

The sunshine peeked out for a few minutes to brighten everything up. Unfortunately, the landscape is still mostly brown, although little shoots of grass and some flowers are starting to break through the ground.

And finally, a shot from the opposite side of the river. I paddled all the way across the river, and then turned around a took a picture of the spot where Greg, Jenny, and Dixie were waitng for me. I don't know if you can see the little specks of white where the water and the hillside come together, but that is the boat dock, parking lot, and a few small outbuildings! My camera was not zoomed in at all, so that's exactly how it looked to me sitting on the kayak. Good thing I didn't fall out! If anyone comes to visit us this year, this is definitely a spot worth checking out.

Happy Birthday Greg!

Somebody is getting older today! Thankfully it's Greg and not me! :) Greg turned 29 today, although we actually celebrated his birthday on Saturday evening by having some friends over for cake, board games, and some Wii. Doesn't exactly sound like a birthday party for a 29 year-old huh??

I'm not really sure if Ginny was trying to help Greg blow out the candles...or if she was hoping to snatch a bite of the strawberry cake covered in "Rainbow Chip" icing and some huge chocolate-covered strawberries! I'm going to say it was the latter. The strawberries were so large that they kept sliding off the top of the cake. What was supposed to be a beautiful masterpiece a 'la Lindsey, was a complete mess by the time Greg blew out the candles. Candles jutted randomly out of the cake to serve as stops for the giant strawberries which were sweating and causing the icing to melt right off the cake. Nobody complained about the taste though, so I guess that's all the matters!

Greg made out quite well this year. Thanks to many of our family members, he can now order his new North Face jacket that he has been eyeing for a long time. He also got some gift certificates to camp at Washington State Parks, a Washington atlas so that we can find the state parks, new headphones for his mp3 player, a WSU t-shirt, "Whitetail-opoly" (the hunting version of Monopoly), some Reese peanut butter eggs, and some little odd and ends. Not too bad!

This is a picture of the cake as soon as I put it all together... before it became a disaster area.


And...at Greg's insistence...here is a picture of the napkins that he so beautifully fanned after learning the trick from Jen recently. He's practically Martha Stewart! :)

Today begins Greg's spring break. We don't have any major plans thanks to the weather (and having to pay taxes!). :( We'll probably do some driving around and exploring later in the week after the rain stops, but it's still just a little too wet and cold for camping. We'll be sure to put some pictures up if we do anything photo-worthy!

Greg says thanks to everybody for the birthday cards and gifts that he received!

Still Snowing

Just when I thought spring was around the corner, Pullman got hit with another round of snow. :( It started in the middle of last week, and just continues to snow...melting slightly, and then snowing some more. I definitely have spring fever!

This weekend was pretty uneventful for Greg and I. We joined some friends Saturday evening to play Rock Band and American Idol Karaoke, but the rest of our weekend was spent indoors... being active at the gym, then being lazy on the couch! A nice balance. :)

This week, we are trying to plan a camping trip for Greg's spring break which starts next Monday. I've been online checking out the various state and national parks and forests. The problem is that so many of the scenic areas are still incredibly wet or snowy. It seems that the majority of the Cascades area isn't even up and running until May due to snow and avalanches. Eek! After seeing Jen and Greg's pictures of San Diego, my vote is for Californ-i-a! Bring on the sunshine.

I'm also preparing for a certain someone's birthday on the 16th. Greg will be turning a whopping 29! Ha ha. He has requested a strawberry cake for his party on Saturday. I'm also going to attempt to make some strawberry jelly for a birthday present. He has already exhausted his supply of jelly that he was given at Christmas, and had to resort to store-bought grape jelly recently. Oh the horror!

Well, sorry there are no new pictures this week. There should be plenty of pictures these next two weekends though, so stay tuned. And send some sunshine and warm weather our way please!

Hike at Rock Creek

This weekend's outing was to the Rock Creek Management Area, also known as the "Scablands". I don't know exactly where we were, but the last town we saw was Endicott, Washington, and we were about an hour and a half from Pullman. It was a pretty interesting area. While driving, you are surrounded by rolling fields, and then all of the sudden giant rock formations begin jutting up from the ground. On the subject of "getting there," we once again found out how unreliable Google directions are! We were starting out a dirt road that was apparently a shortcut. The shortcut ended up costing us quite a bit of extra time however. This road is actually closed from November until mid-March. Once we reached the sign that stated this, Brian and Jenny - the other two people we were hiking with - were already stuck in his 2WD Nissan pick-up. As they tried to back out to the main road, his truck just gradually slid into the ditch. After a couple of attempts, and lots of mud slinging, Greg finally managed to pull him out, and we all made it back to the main road to take the long way around! Greg's boots weighed an extra 10lbs. by the time we were back on our way from all the mud caked on them.

After doubling back more than a few times, we finally reached our destination. Best I could tell, Rock Creek Managment Area is a swath of this "scabland" that ranchers can graze their horses or cattle on with permit. The "trail" was just a farm road weaving between the giant rock formations.

The majority of the road however, is seasonal and was not yet open to vehicles. So we walked about 3 miles out to find the waterfall. Here we are at the very beginning of the hike. That's Brian (and his dog Touk), Jenny, and Greg. Dixie had to sit out this hike because she has been a little under the weather.

This was our first wildlife spotting! By the way, this is what they call a potato bug out here. I don't think I would have wanted to dig potatoes back home if our potato bugs looked like this!

The only other wildlife that we spotted during the hike was a hawk. Greg was pretty disappointed. The scenery however, looked like it was straight from some western movie. I was just waiting for a whole line of feathered heads to pop up over one of the ridges and stare silently but ominously down at us. Sometimes my imagination gets a little out of control. :)

We finally reached the waterfalls, which looked very out of place among all the other scenery. Unfortunately, the water was too high for us to get in a position to take pictures of the big waterfall, so we had to settle for this smaller one. It was still pretty neat. On the three mile walk out, I was very skeptical about seeing an actual waterfall in this part of the country, but I was wrong. The day was very overcast, so there wasn't much color to be captured.

We (finally) made it back to the truck, and then back out to the main road without getting lost or stuck again. We were all famished, so we stopped off in Colfax, Washington for some nice, cheesy Mexican food! Lastly, here is a picture of Brian's dog, Touk. He is a mixture of Border Collie and Golden Retriever. I had to post his picture because he reminds me so much of Oreo, the dog we had growing up.

That was the extent of our excitement for the week. We are tenatively planning a trip to Olympic National Park over on the Washington coast for spring break in mid-March. The pictures on the website look pretty amazing, so let's hope everything works out!