Bleh.
My big plan to recover from a three-hour drive yesterday was to have a slice of David's Da Vinci pizza and then check into the hotel and watch the latest Veronica Mars.
But everything went wrong. David's was out of Da Vinci so I had to get cheese pizza (still good). But then the shit really did hit the fan... at 9:00 I turned to the UPN channel for Veronica and instead saw that The A-Team was playing...
WTF?!?
Turns out that the local Spokane UPN affiliate switched to "The Retro Television Network" back in January. So no Veronica Mars for me. Comcast bastards.
Fast forward to this afternoon. Work is over, and it's time for the boring drive home. If anybody is curious, here's pretty much what the Central Washington's Columbia Basin looks like this time of year...
Later in the season the wheat will be grown up and turn a nice golden color which looks great at sunset. Today, it's just getting started, so things are a little green yet.
Usually I drive I-90 because it's the fastest way back home. But, because I love my readers, I decided to drive Highway 2 instead. This way, I could make a stop at "Dry Falls" so I could show everybody what the largest waterfall in the world looks like. Well, it was the biggest, but not anymore...
Unfortunately, the massive scale of the formation is lost in this photo. Those cliffs are 400 feet tall. If there was water still flowing over them, it would dwarf Niagara Falls by a large margin (it's 350% wider and 250% taller). Turning back the clock 13,000 years, here is what it would look like...
If you're curious about the whole Dry Falls story, I've copied the info in an extended entry.
For everybody else, see you tomorrow (and don't worry about me, David's had a fresh Da Vinci pizza ready for my lunch today, and Veronica Mars was waiting for me on the TiVo when I got home).
DRY FALLS
During the ice age, glaciers to the north blocked the Columbia River and forced it to find a new route. The river, swollen from melting glacial ice, began to carve a new channel here. But that was only the beginning.
A river in Idaho found no way around it's ice dam as well. The river filled its valley with a huge lake that flooded many square miles of Montana - until the ice dam broke. With a flow up to ten time the combined flow of all the rivers of the world, the lake enptied across Idaho and onto eastern Washington. Much of the water rushed through the new channel opened by the Columbia River. The turbulent water enlarged the channel and created huge waterfalls. Eastern Washington was scoured by many such floods, each lasting only a few weeks.
When the last flood subsided, large areas of eastern Washington were left scarred with dry channels, called "coulees." This one, the Grand Coulee, is the largest. Cutting across the coulee is Dry Falls. This 3-1/2 mile wide and over 400 foot tall group of scalloped cliffs was at one time the largest waterfall in the world.
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Thank you for going the extra mile for us. Your pictures and narrative are excellent, as usual!
Dry falls makes me sad, a bit.
Nice shots, Dave. I kind of think those boring roads are really interesting places–reminds me of MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, in many ways. You mentioned TiVo–what a simple piece of electronic engineering; living without a TiVo once you’ve had one is like being transported back in time, where life was more chaotic and disorganized…left was right…up was down. It’s a dark place, let me tell you. I’m glad that plastic box is smarter than me, and I’m glad VM was waiting for you. I know how much I appreciate a REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER episode waiting for me after a Friday night of drinking.
I never knew WA was so… flat. It looks like Kansas. How interesting. The falls are pretty cool. Thanks Dave!
Nice shots, Dave. I kind of think those boring roads are really interesting places–reminds me of MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, in many ways. You mentioned TiVo–what a simple piece of electronic engineering; living without a TiVo once you’ve had one is like being transported back in time, where life was more chaotic and disorganized…left was right…up was down. It’s a dark place, let me tell you. I’m glad that plastic box is smarter than me, and I’m glad VM was waiting for you. I know how much I appreciate a REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER episode waiting for me after a Friday night of drinking.
You know what that post made me say? Say WA?!?
Man, I miss my home state.
Technically, west side was completely underwander several hundred, billion years ago. Or something like that. Thankfully, they didn’t build my house back then.
And I agree whole-heartedly with Jeff.
And those falls, if still actually flowing, would’ve wiped Portland completely off the map.
Waterfalls kick ass. Cool entry Dave.
Whew, thank god for Tivo eh? Thanks for the pics too, I feel almost like I was there with ya. No, that was my trip on I-80 through Wyoming. Now that’s a boring ride.
Say WHA?…er I mean, say COOOOLLL!
Nice shots of nice places. You have a good camera eye. Those would make pretty good desktops, any chance of getting those in hi-res? Thanks for the hard work!
Sigh… love the photos of the flatness. That road just goes on and on and on… and there re bo b&*%$£d hedgerows to block yor view. I love England (don’t get me wrong) but, sigh (again) what I wouldn’t do for a view like that…
Thanks for the pictures. It makes me want to visit WA. Maybe you should work at the Tourism Bureau.
I hate when networks screw up show schedules in mid season. Amazing Race was just moved as well. And I don’t know to when just yet. This might completely mess up my uber-perfect dual TiVo settings.
That’s truly a tragedy… the A-Team that is. Mr. T was the star of many of my childhood nightmares ::shudder::
Beautiful shots though!
We don’t even have a WB channel in all our 800 or whatever channels. So I will have to wait until I can rent all the Veronica Mars shows to see what you’ve been squawking about all this time.
And I previously LIED to Kevin when I thought we had 4 TiVo tuners. We don’t. Just 4 DirecTV receivers. Which I learned when I was grooming in the dog room and wanted to TiVo something. “What do you mean we don’t have TiVo down here?” “Why did you think we DID?”
I dunno, one receiver looks pretty much like the other. So we only have the two dual-tuner TiVo receivers. But my point is, that we get around the multi-channel quandary on those packed nights (like Sunday) by recording what we need to during prime-time, then recording again during the West-Coast feeds.
And no, I don’t have a problem. I could quit anytime.
I’m glad your TiVo got the job done. Worst case, you could catch VM on Tues at 9 since they’ve been reairing the latest eps. then.
VM’s actually moving to Tuesdays at 9 on April 11, but your TiVo will probably know that, right?
This just in from Mr. T, “I pity the fool who don’t love my show.”
What a guy. Always going out of your way for us…
Nice pics!
I love pictures of the open road! Probably because I love driving on the open road. Your pictures reminded me of driving through West Texas. Except the grass was green and I detected what appeared to be a slight hill. But other then that, they’re exactly the same.