OT Palouse hills scenery pics

Here are some scenery pics I have taken the past few years, the first half of them from heart of the palouse area along the WA/ID border, the second bunch starting with the yellow fields of canola are on or nearby our place which is at the SE eadge of the palouse in Idaho where the timber and canyons start. The palouse rolling hills have deep silty soils and produce crops of winter wheat which often yields over 100bu/a dryland these days. Spring wheat, barley, peas, lentils, garbanzo beans, and a few misc. crops are grown in rotation with the winter wheat in the eastern palouse. Much of the western side of the palouse is dry enough that mostly a wheat-fallow rotation is used to conserve moisture but still grow good wheat crops.

Check out these threads for pics of equipment on the slopes.

First one is tractors, second is combines harvesting.

http://www.ytmag.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=ttalk&th=940074

http://www.ytmag.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=harvest&th=40545


enjoy! questions/comments welcome

Is this a Loes type soil?. It is amazing how the volcanoes, winds and glaciers have formed the many different landscapes in the northwest. Winds were theorized to have exceeded 100 mph for hundreds of years after the ice age, forming the hills like the Palouse, Nebraska sand hills and the hills along the western Mississippi river valleys.

Midwest and central plains have been pretty much bulldozed flat by the glaciers that have passed through the area and then melted leaving the cames and moraines. Also a lot of non-native rocks... Gene

I always said that if I had to leave Mo. I would go to Montana. I may change my mind after seeing those pics.

Gene

Wow!!!

That is absolutely stunning scenery!

Vito

Beautiful. Breathtaking scenery ,great crops , and well taken photos. Thanks

Very nice. Reminds me of the Flint Hills in Kansas.

Great pictures! Where was the snow scene with the forested hillsides taken? That doen"t look like any Palouse country I"ve ever seen.

Very pretty!

I'll second Vito. Stunning photo's All I can say is wow! Thanks.

Yes it is Loess soil blown from glacial deposits in Washington. Glaciers did not make it this far south but gouged out many lakes in the northernmost part of Idaho.

Jerry- I was standing at the edge of a field looking into the clearwater river canyon right at the town of Orofino, ID and hwy 12. If I turned around and snapped a picture looking the other way it would just look like my others with a hilly farmfield. My county is mostly timberland and we farm right to the edge of some heavy timber and eastward it is woods clear to Montana.

I thought that might be one of the canyons east of the Palouse just wasn"t sure what highway that was. Thanks for the follow up.

WOW - Gonna have to get outa the Midwest more!

Nice pictures.

ALl I can say is !!!TERIFFIC PICTURES & THANKS!!!
LOU

Nancy, Are you sure you mean the Flint Hills in Kansas. I have been there many times. My wife is from there. Never seen anything close to that beautiful there. I would love to see those Palouse hills someday. Absolutely stunning.

There Is a heaven on earth !!!!!

Beautiful !!

Looks like a snowmobiler's dream in the winter.

If anyone gets out here to the Palouse area, make sure you take a trip up Steptoe Butte (state park) and take in the views....awesome! Late June or July the contrasting colors of golden winter wheat, green spring wheat and brown fallow ground make for an amazing picture or two. There are also a few coffee table books available full of great pics of the area.

That kind of beauty will bring tears to your eyes. AMERICA!!! What a country!!

More great pictures! Thanks so much for posting them. You have a keen eye and sense of perfection in how you choose your shots.

Wow , bet they dont sell much TV out there ! ,, A guy would Want to be awake every Day lite hour just to see ALL the BEAUTY ,, Thanx A bunch! I am pretty sure /, YOU do have Some Halelashus dropoffs ,cliffs and HOLES and sinks out in that country TOO ,,. no such thing as autopilot on equipmentthere I suppose????
Want to humor us Allsometime and pass those pix along too ???,,,

The formation of the Palouse is almost as facinating as the scenery. They were formed when the dam holding a giant glacial lake gave way and the flood waters formed this landscape.Repeatedly.
I am blessed by being paid to drive thru this area regularly and have had a chance to read and experience the subject. Absolutly facinating.
There is a dry falls of the Columbia River that was formed by the same flooding action that will simply make your hair stand on end when you grasp how enormous the floods were.
Come visit Washington my friends! You WILL NOT be disappointed!
Glacial Lake Missoula

Wow! Those are some of the nicest photos I"ve seen on this site. I"ve got tropics, beach, jumbo shrimp, etc. but it doesn"t even come close to that.

Love that area. Are you the guy with the "steel tracks" on the Cat site?

Hi Chris(Wa) I read your link an it seemed to say the flood water 'excavaded' the Loess downstream leaving/creating the scablands behind? Check out this link: Google: Palouse paradise ..and read second hit: http://idahoptv.org/outdoors/shows/palouseparadise/palouse.cfm
I'll paste that below also.. hope no errors in reading or posting links.. Great views no matter how it was created.. For me, knowing history of how it was created adds a lot more to the story.. ag.
Idaho Public TV: Palouse story

Chris, I hope you read this, since I am typing it a couple of days late. The Palouse hills were formed not by the waters of Lake Missoula, but rather of dust and sand that probably was part volcanic ash and part glacial till dust. The hills are, or were, actually more or less sand dunes that formed when this area was a whole lot dryer than it is now.

There was a lot more area covered by similar dust/sand hills than there is now, but when the ice dam(s) that held the water back in Glacial Lake Missoula broke loose, it released hundreds of cubic miles of flood water very quickly. Since the current Columbia River gorge was also blocked by glaciers, the flood water could not follow that path to the ocean. So the floods followed the paths of least resistance, and formed new channels. Probably the most impressive channel formed the Dry Falls, but there were also several other channels, including one that went nearly straight South from what is now Spokane, and another that went through the Connell area. The huge amounts of flood waters eroded away much of the soil in the channels, leaving rocky, almost canyonlike areas. These channels often have Palouse hills on either sides of them.

I live on property in Spokane County that obviously encountered a large amount of erosion, as it is very rocky. Yet only a half mile away, there is rich farmland with very deep soil and no rocks at all. As a child, I always wondered why our property would be so very rocky, yet only a little distance away, they were not rocky. Obviously, our property is in one of the "channels.

The areas of Eastern Washington that were washed by the various Lake Missoula Floods are called the "channeled scablands". From the air, it is very obvious that a WHOLE LOT of water carved the channels. But it took a bunch of thinking by the scientists to determine what must have happened to have caused that much destruction. The mystery was: where could that much water have come from?

Lots of the soil that was washed off of Eastern Washington was deposited in the Columbia Basin, and it is believed that the wonderful soil in the Willamette Valley in Oregon also was washed down the Columbia River and deposited when the floods backed up the Willamette River.

As you might have guessed, this topic is something that fascinates me, and I have studied everything I could find on it. I am quite sure that the floods did not create the Palouse Hills, but rather the floods reshaped some of the Palouse Hills and removed others, leaving the patterns of rocky areas seen today.

Right on the money, Hal. The area I live in was under 200 feet of water during those floods. The Palouse Hills are one of my favorite motorcycle road riding areas.