Some Central Washington Geology Stops/Notes

A friend is heading over to Sun Lakes and up to Kettle Falls and wanted a few geology visit tips so I assembled a few past posts that may be along their route and thought Why not just post it on the blog.

1) This first site is on the east side of the Columbia River just off Interstate 90. You can see a fair bit of palagonite just zooming along the road especially on west bound I90 portion of the freeway west of the Columbia.
http://washingtonlandscape.blogspot.com/2013/01/giant-columns-and-palagonite.html

2) The road from Brewster to Grand Coulee is one of my favorites. There is a great wide turnout to view the Columbia/Okanogan Rivers junction, ice age terraces and basalt injections.
http://washingtonlandscape.blogspot.com/2012/07/basalt-injections-near-brewster.html

3) Any drive up onto the Waterville Plateau is a great geology adventure. This route up McNeil Canyon Road is a great spot to see erractic boulders scattered across the landscape. 
http://washingtonlandscape.blogspot.com/2012/04/field-of-erratics.html

4) The highway southeast of Wenatchee has a pull out where great giant ripples from one of the later ice age floods flowed.
http://washingtonlandscape.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-on-giant-ripples-and-big-floods.html
http://washingtonlandscape.blogspot.com/2012/02/giant-ripples.html

5) This site is perhaps one of my favorite geology locations in all of Washington: back to back unconformities with the lower one being a spot where you can feel ancient soil (deeply weathered granitic rock) at the top of the lower unit just below the Columbia River Basalt
http://washingtonlandscape.blogspot.com/2011/12/moment-in-deep-time-back-to-back.html

6) I have stopped at this site three times and always had the entire place to myself. Great view of the dam and glacial striations at your feet and views of old glacial lake terraces
http://washingtonlandscape.blogspot.com/2011/12/crown-point-state-park-grand-coulee-dam.html

7) A bit subtle but the high buttes near Creston are explained and there is a road exposure of the older rocks 
http://washingtonlandscape.blogspot.com/2011/10/windows-and-islands-in-basalt-near.html

8) This is a site I want to go back to with ample time - I want to measure a few of this huge erratics
http://washingtonlandscape.blogspot.com/2011/08/glacial-erratics-near-grand-coulee-dam.html

Alas I have very little north of the Columbia. In part it is because the geology is very complex, some I can not share, and it is an area I do not frequent nearly often enough.