Thursday, June 14, 2018

Dry Falls

First stop after leaving Wenatchee, and bomb making: Dry Falls. It looked like this.

Not dry at all, and no falls. Bummer.

There is a nice visitor's center at the spot, and it has a good view, with lots of info inside as well, and it isn't hot. All good stuff.

It could be fun to explore this area in early spring or late fall when the weather is more agreeable, but I think I got the point just from hanging my toes over the edge.

Definitely deserty here.

And the country goes on forever.

The visitor's center does allow service animals but not pets. Pets are fed to the resident tiger. I missed that part.

Here's the general area as seen from above in 1935.

If the weather hadn't been so hot I might have found the route down to the water, but as it was — meh.

It was a goodly drive, and I was hoping to find a cozy spot where I could camp. Didn't look like there was any.

There is a state park close by, but the whole area is so wide open and sun blasted that I was not impressed.

I did hope to do some hiking (finally) a bit farther south along Lake Lenore, or "Lenore Lakes", however you say it, and I did find the turnout. The route description said something like "Pull off the road at the turnout and leave your car in the steep parking area," which meant in practice that there was just enough room to pull off the road and hit a tiny patch of dirt angling upward at around 30°, and then leaving your car about 10 feet (3m) from the road, all buttoned up to keep out the clouds of dust whirling around every time a vehicle passed, and hope that nothing happened.

The weather was so hot that I didn't even consider going for a vertical hike right up into the hills. There was no point.

There was a much bigger pullout fairly close by, and I chose to go there, take a few careful steps down to the lake, and rinse out a pair of socks. (They are in short supply right now.) While there I eyeballed my maps frantically. Didn't get much of a clue, though I had to go somewhere.

So I continued driving, to another falls, and then some other uninteresting things happened.

More info:

Dry Falls (Wikipedia)

Sun Lakes-Dry Falls State Park

Lake Lenore