A while back, Mark and I planned to take a trip to the Ginkgo Petrified Forest, but because of a time crunch were unable to do so. After our return from Savannah, Mark had a forum to attend in Spokane so we decided to make a day trip on our way back home to the town of Vantage and visit the forest.
The forest banks the Columbia river and it has spectacular views. These are some of the petrified Ginkgo stumps. You've probably heard of Ginkgo Biloba right? Well these are the ancient ancestors to those trees.
Don't think they can make it any clearer!!
This is such a beautiful river.
That is the bridge that we crossed over to get to the forest and when we went fishing at Wanapum dam.
More petrified Ginkgo.
Kinda looks like drift wood...but you'd have a heck of a time trying to light it!!
This is the skull of a saber tooth tiger found in the area.
Thought all my little paleontologists would enjoy seeing it!
After touring the museum and looking at the petrified Ginkgo stumps, we took a drive down to the river. Way up on top of the hill is were the museum is and where I took the pictures of the trees and the river.
These pictures are probably only interesting to me but there was a trail that I explored for a little bit while Mark sat in the car with the air conditioning going. It was over 100 degrees this day and I wanted to stay pretty close to where Mark was, especially since I was by myself.
I just found the scenery beautiful and wanted to try and capture some of it.
When we left the petrified forest we headed for the ghost town of Liberty. These are windmills of the Wild Horse Wind Farm built by Puget Sound Energy. They are located on the ridge tops of Whiskey Dick Mountain where plenty of wind is generated in this area. The towers are 221 feet tall and the rotators are 264 feet in diameter; which look like Mercedes emblems to me, and are larger than the wing span of a Boeing 747 jet!! They are used to help generate electricity in this area. There are 149 towers and each generates enough power for 450 homes.
Unfortunately, because of the hot dry weather, there was a forest fire in the area. That's why the sky is so hazy.
It also kept us from getting to Liberty...oh well...good excuse for another trip in the future!
Our final stop on the way home was a little fruit stand where they had these photo ops. Papa was good natured and humored me, even though he didn't want to. I tried to get him to take a picture of me in one of them but we couldn't remember how to get the camera's view screen up, I never use it, and his eyes were bothering him so he couldn't see through the viewer. Oh well, maybe next time.
Look at all those bullets! He looks like a real bandito!!
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