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Soap Lake is a meromictic soda lake in the town of Soap Lake, WA formed by the Missoula Floods at the foot of the Grand ...
10/19/2026

Soap Lake is a meromictic soda lake in the town of Soap Lake, WA formed by the Missoula Floods at the foot of the Grand Coulee.

Soap Lake features the earth's longest documented two-layer permanent lake stratification (meromictic), meaning its upper and lower waters have not mixed for at least 2,000 years.

The water contains 23 different dissolved minerals and mineral salts (including sodium, carbonate, sulfate, bicarbonate, and chloride), giving it a higher and more diverse mineral concentration than the ocean

The water is hyper-saline and hyper-alkaline, with a pH level ranging between 9.8 and 10

Similar to the Dead Sea, the dense mineral content makes it remarkably easy to float in the water

Wind action on the high concentrations of carbonates and natural foam creates a frothy suds line on the shore, while the water itself leaves a slick, soapy, or oily feel on the skin

Local Indigenous tribes (including the Colville) historically treated the lake as a neutral ground and used its sulfurous black mud and mineral-rich waters to heal wounds, soothe aches, and treat animals.

In the early-to-mid 20th century, Soap Lake became a famous world health resort and sanitarium (such as McKay Hospital and Siloam Sanatorium), famously treating World War I soldiers suffering from Buerger's disease (a rare circulation/gangrene-like ailment)

Spruce Burl Trailhead-Olympic National Park-a forest of spruce trees with large burls. It is a loop trail that starts an...
10/18/2026

Spruce Burl Trailhead-Olympic National Park
-a forest of spruce trees with large burls. It is a loop trail that starts and ends on the Beach 1 Trail.

A series of shallow basalt rock shelters carved approximately 13,000 to 15,000 years ago by catastrophic Ice Age meltwat...
10/17/2026

A series of shallow basalt rock shelters carved approximately 13,000 to 15,000 years ago by catastrophic Ice Age meltwater floods-Lake Lenore Caves❤️

The erosive power of the Missoula Floods scoured the basalt cliff walls in the lower Grand Coulee, helping validate geologist J. Harlen Bretz's controversial catastrophic flood hypothesis. The site is a key stop along the Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail.

For roughly 5,000 years, Sahaptian and Interior Salish peoples (including ancestral Yakama, Moses, and Columbia tribes) used these shallow overhangs as seasonal base camps and temporary storage while hunting, fishing, and gathering bitterroot or biscuitroot

Despite being called "caves," they are actually massive rock alcoves and overhangs scoured into the cliff face rather than deep subterranean tunnels. The largest opening resembles a whale's mouth.

10/17/2026

Clue at the end😊

Steamboat Rock rises roughly 800 feet above Banks Lake and spans a 600‑acre flat summit.The formation was sculpted durin...
10/16/2026

Steamboat Rock rises roughly 800 feet above Banks Lake and spans a 600‑acre flat summit.

The formation was sculpted during the Ice Age by the Missoula Floods. When the ice dam holding back Glacial Lake Missoula repeatedly ruptured, torrential floodwaters—moving at speeds up to 65 mph—blasted through the plateau, ripping away the surrounding rock and leaving this durable basalt monolith stranded in the middle of the canyon.

Steamboat Rock only became surrounded by water in the mid-20th century. When the Grand Coulee Dam was constructed in the 1930s and 1940s, the Upper Grand Coulee was impounded and filled by pumping water from the Columbia River, creating the 27-mile-long Banks Lake.

The cliffs expose multiple distinct layers of Columbia River Basalt, formed roughly 15 to 17 million years ago by massive continental fissure eruptions rather than typical volcanic cones.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, local ranchers used the top of the plateau as a secure pasture for horses and cattle. Because vertical cliffs surround virtually the entire perimeter, ranchers only had to block off the single narrow trail access to keep animals from wandering off

Early settlers and travelers named it because its elongated, sheer-walled shape resembles the hull and smokestack profile of a 19th-century river steamboat cruising down the channel..

The Oneonta Tunnel in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge is a 125-foot passage through solid rock. First built in 1914 by eng...
10/15/2026

The Oneonta Tunnel in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge is a 125-foot passage through solid rock.

First built in 1914 by engineer Samuel Lancaster for the Historic Columbia River Highway.

When crews first set out to blast through the 200-foot-high basalt cliff, they ran into a major safety concern. The rock formation (known as "dice rock") was so unstable that engineers worried the entire wall would collapse onto the adjacent mainline railroad tracks. To save it, Lancaster had crews inject concrete directly into the rock's crevasses to glue the mountain together before they finished cutting the tunnel

Because the Columbia River Highway had to squeeze right past the active railroad mainline, the tunnel was an incredibly tight fit. Designers could leave only 18 feet of natural rock to serve as the outer wall supporting the mountain next to the train tracks

By the 1940s, automobiles had grown too wide for the cramped, timber-lined tunnel. In 1948, the highway department built a new bypass road, filled the entire Oneonta Tunnel with rubble, and sealed off both ends. For over half a century, it was hidden in plain sight, looking like a solid cliffside until the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) excavated and reopened it for pedestrians in 2009

The gorge, falls, and tunnel all get their names from Carleton Watkins, a legendary 19th-century landscape photographer. He was the first to document the area in 1883 and named it after his hometown of Oneonta, New York.

The cave lay undisturbed for roughly 4,000 years until 1982, when a Forest Service worker named Tim Layser stumbled upon...
10/15/2026

The cave lay undisturbed for roughly 4,000 years until 1982, when a Forest Service worker named Tim Layser stumbled upon it while surveying the area for a timber sale

While many nearby caves in Mount St. Helens territory are lava tubes, Layser Cave is a pseudokarst cave. It was actually formed by the intense folding and uplift of the Cascade Range millions of years ago.

Layser Cave measures approximately 60 feet long by 40 feet wide (about 18 by 12 meters), with a ceiling height reaching up to 8 to 9 feet at its maximum and an entrance width of roughly 20 to 30 feet

Prehistoric people used the cave for thousands of years until roughly 3,500 years ago, when a massive eruption of Mount St. Helens choked the area in a thick layer of volcanic ash and pumice, forcing the inhabitants to abandon it.

The cave wasn't a permanent home; it was a seasonal hunting camp used during the spring and summer. Archaeologists found the remains of at least 108 distinct deer, as well as elk, mountain sheep, and salmon that were processed over small fire hearths

Over 10,000 to 15,000 artifacts have been recovered from the site. They stayed in pristine condition for millennia because naturally occurring calcium carbonate in the rock created an alkaline, protective soil layer that stopped organic material from decaying.

The Guler Ice Cave is a natural lava tube located near Trout Lake in Washington's Gifford Pinchot National ForestThe cav...
10/14/2026

The Guler Ice Cave is a natural lava tube located near Trout Lake in Washington's Gifford Pinchot National Forest

The cave's unique geological footprint was forged between 12,000 and 18,000 years ago. It didn't flow directly from Mount Adams' main peak, but rather from a massive, ancient molten lava lake that once filled what is now Lake Wapiki in the Indian Heaven Volcanic Field.

The tube acts as a natural "cold trap," where heavy, cold air drops into the underground chambers and remains trapped even as summer temperatures rise above ground.

It sits inside the Indian Heaven Volcanic Field, an active volcanic area stretching between Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens.

Native Americans and early white settlers used the underground chambers to store food and keep items cold long before modern commercial refrigeration

Settlers even hauled ice out of the caves to supply local communities like Hood River.

The main tube system is relatively short and shallow, measuring about 650 feet (roughly 200 meters) long.

The cave is named after Christian Guler, a late 19th-century settler who turned the natural wonder into a commercial refrigeration business. He used the freezing chambers to store local farm produce safely until it was ready to be carted to regional markets

Coyote Wall (also known as The Syncline) is a dramatic geological feature in the Columbia River Gorge on the Washington ...
10/14/2026

Coyote Wall (also known as The Syncline) is a dramatic geological feature in the Columbia River Gorge on the Washington side, just east of Bingen

Coyote Wall is geologically an anticline (specifically part of the Bingen Anticline), even though locals and mountain bikers have long nicknamed the area "The Syncline

The area directly adjacent to the wall is known as "The Labyrinth." It features a maze-like network of rugged talus slopes, hidden waterfalls, and unique basalt rock formations

Unlike most rock outcrops in the Gorge that sit horizontally, Coyote Wall slopes diagonally down toward the Columbia River like a massive natural slide

The wall is made of columnar basalt formed by massive lava flows roughly 16 million years ago. Subsequent geological folding, faulting, and ongoing uplift shaped its signature tilted look

About a quarter-mile into the hike along Old Ranch Road, you can spot ancient tree molds preserved directly in the rock walls where old forests were swallowed by lava flows

Because it sits on the eastern side of the Columbia River Gorge, Coyote Wall gets significantly less rain than the western side. When Portland or Hood River are socked in with rain, Coyote Wall is often sunny and dry.

The area features historical vision pits, pictographs, and petroglyphs, and looks out toward Memaloose Island (a traditional burial ground for river tribes

Beacon Rock is the cooled interior plug of an extinct volcano that erupted roughly 57,000 years ago as part of the Borin...
10/13/2026

Beacon Rock is the cooled interior plug of an extinct volcano that erupted roughly 57,000 years ago as part of the Boring volcanic field.

Around 15,000 years ago, massive Missoula Floods roared through the Columbia River Gorge, washing away the softer outer material of the volcano and leaving the hard basalt core standing alone

Its summit stands 845 to 848 feet above the Columbia River (and sea level), coming remarkably close to Captain William Clark’s original 1805 journal estimate of "about 800 feet high"

Local Cascade Tribes historically called the landmark Che-che-op-tin, which translates to the "navel of the world"

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark first called it “Beaten Rock” on October 31, 1805, before changing it to “Beacon Rock” in 1806.

For many years in the 19th century, the landmark was popularly known as "Castle Rock" before the U.S. Board on Geographic Names officially restored "Beacon Rock" in 1916.

Wealthy mining engineer and hiker Henry J. Biddle bought Beacon Rock privately in 1915 for $1 to save it from the quarry.

Between 1915 and 1918, Biddle and his crew hand-drilled and blasted a pedestrian path up the sheer cliff face without modern machinery.

The winding path features 51 to 52 hairpin switchbacks, 22 wooden bridges, and over 100 concrete slabs across roughly three-quarters to a mile of trail leading to the summit.

Biddle's family later donated the land to Washington State, and it became an official state park in 1935

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