Reunion - Time to Go Home

We said good-bye to David on Wednesday. Below - The Griffins started their 2,000 mile trek home early Thursday morning. Their goal was to get to the Mount Rushmore area that night. The Kings left midmorning. They were going to Yellowstone on the way home.  

We headed out early afternoon. The GPS indicated we could have been home by 10:51 that night (not counting stops)

 A few hours later we got on I-90 at Missoula. The next instruction from the GPS - turn in 366 miles! We're up to an 11:29 arrival time by this point in our trip. We stopped in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for the night. 

On the way home we visited the Ginko Petrified Forest State Park in 

Vantage, Washington, just west of the Columbia River 

 The river is very low because there is a crack in nearby Wanapum Dam. The low water level has created huge problems - people with "waterfront" property haven't been able to use their docks or boats. Public boat ramps also can't be used. Initially salmon couldn't navigate the fish ladders. Nothing can be done for the people and their boats. For a while the salmon were collected, bused around the dam, and put back in the water above the dam. When the modified fish ladders appeared to be working, the salmon were on their own to make it up the river. Read more about it here. This article talks about the huge numbers of salmon that come up this section of the river. Click here to read about the "math error" that resulted in the cracked concrete. 

The interpretive center at the top of the bluff had a wonderful museum of petrified wood and interesting display about the history of the area.

"Ginkgo Petrified Forest is a registered national natural landmark. It is regarded as one of the most unusual fossil forests in the world." source

 petrified pine logs discovered during nearby highway construction

At one time this part of Washington had a very different climate. Shallow lakes, forests, and swamps abounded.  "Species of both broadleaf and upland conifers ended up buried in the mud of small lakes and pools. Perhaps they were transported from higher elevations by mudflows produced by volcanic eruptions; perhaps the fallen trees were carried by normal rivers and flooding. Later, a volcanic fissure in southeastern Washington sent floods of molten lava across the Columbia Plateau, leveling the landscape and destroying the standing plants and trees. However, the waterlogged, mud-covered trees were left intact. When lava from the “Ginkgo Flow” contacted the water, it formed pillow basalt that further protected the trees.

"Entombed in basalt, the wood slowly began a chemical transformation. As Ann Saling explains in The Great Northwest Nature Factbook, buried wood usually decays, but when the groundwater contains enough silica (picked up from volcanic ash) and other minerals, the minerals penetrate the wood in a process known as petrifaction. Some wood remains, visible under a microscope, but most is replaced by silica. Other minerals and compounds in the groundwater also percolate through the wood, adding brilliant color patterns. Over time, the wood becomes stone." Click here for more. (history link.org) 

Many samples of petrified wood were outside the visitors' center. 

These Native American petroglyphs were cut from rock cliffs that were buried in water when the Wanapum Dam was built. 

This interpretive center is technically in the town of Vantage, Washington. The town was moved to its current location in the 1960s when the construction of the Wanapum Dam created a lake and the original town of Vantage ended up being under 50 feet of water. See before and after pictures here.