Another hike on the eastern side of the Washington state. Michael, an avid hiker and photographer organized this hike that originally was planned for the Tom McCall preserve in the Oregon side. Since spring has been delayed quite a bit due to weather, we found there weren’t that many flowers at McCall. Luckily Michael had a plan “B”. We drove for about half an hour to the Washington side to a trail called Columbia Hills. This trail is a service road that climbs to a ridge were a lot of FAA navigation antennae and beacons for air traffic control are located. Being farther East than even the Klickitat trail which I did last week, the scenery was completely different to what we’re used to. This time we found ourselves doing a soft climb with incredible views of the valley of the Columbia and also to the north towards Mt Adams. As the name of the hike states, this one was not for the views (which were pretty amazing anyway). It was all about the wild flowers. As you’ll see in some of the pictures it almost seems there were none. That wasn’t the case. All the flowers in this album, with just a few exceptions, where very small. Taking the pictures required getting down to your stomach or knees and very close. On the way back, instead of walking back down the road, we decided to cut thru the open field. That’s where we took the majority of the pictures. We also found some rolls of barb wire that made an excellent opportunity for some experimentation. At the end, we all ended up with some bruises on our knees and legs, dirty clothes, maybe a couple of ticks here and there and more than a handful of real good flower shots.
No comments:
Post a Comment