To Hell('s Canyon) and Back

We just got back from a week wandering around eastern Washington and NE Oregon, with the main aim of having a look at Hell's Canyon.

Hell's Canyon is a stretch of the Snake River on the border between Oregon and Idaho. As the name might imply, it's a rather impressive canyon, deeper than the Grand Canyon at it's deepest, although not as wide or nearly as, ummm, grand, in our opinions.

We were unable to see that particular part of the Canyon because it's further downstream from the area in the photo and is visible only from an overlook that was closed because of lingering winter snow.

Speaking of that, we were turned back a total of 3 times from routes we had chosen because of snow-blocked roads. We were somewhat surprised - it was pretty much full-on spring/summer down there, with trees in bloom and flowers bursting out all over. And, in most of these road closures, not a word about the snow until we actually got to where the snow still was.

That said, it was a fine trip and we spent a couple of days following the Columbia River down along Lake Roosevelt, Grand Coulée Dam, the Columbia River Gorge about an hour east of Portland and to some of the high country in NE Oregon such as the Blue Mountains. We walked around a couple of nice waterfalls (Palousie Falls in WA and Multnomah Falls in Oregon) and admired lots of spring flowers. And then we got to come back home where spring is finally starting to take off.