Our first tent camping trip of the year took us to Columbia Hills State Park. Neither Jack nor I had driven through the part of the state south of Yakima or spent any time on the Columbia River, so it was novel. From cancelled trips last summer we have learned to plan adventure in Eastern Washington early in the season when fires and excessive heat are less likely.
We spent three nights camping, which was a good decision because of the length of the drive and we enjoyed sharing the trip and our meals with good friends.
Friday night we set up our tent in the windiest conditions I’ve camped in, which is what I had been led to expect for the area. Funnily enough though it was hardly windy at all the rest of the weekend and we actually had thundershowers that cut short our swim and left seven of us huddled in the bathroom one afternoon. Most of the time though it was pretty nice and not as hot as I had feared it would be.
The first picture below is a petroglyph we saw on a short walking tour. Not much is known about them, but many tribes converged on the area and it sounds like it is roughly 400 years old, perhaps.
For Fathers’ Day, the two dads took an adult-paced hike while the rest of us enjoyed a decidedly kid-paced, much shorter hike.
No one got bit by a rattlesnake though the possibility had me a bit freaked out. The long hours of daylight this time of year have their advantages, but it was impossible to maintain anything close to a normal bed time for the kids.
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