Snoqualmie Falls, WA

Today after an excellent breakfast at the Fall City Grill, we decided to drive to Snoqualmie Falls. The skies were overcast and rain was predicted, but we figured that would be the standing weather forecast for the state of Washington for the entire time we are here, so we might as well chance it. On the way, we saw about six people fly-fishing in the Snoqualmie River, which is really neat to watch.

Once you arrive in the parking lot of Snoqualmie Falls you can hear the falls immediately. It's only a short walk to the upper viewing deck and while we were there we were approached by two women who had a telescope set up. It seems they have been watching the progress of a nest of peregrine falcons for several weeks and they had the telescope set pointing at a fledgling who was waiting to be fed. I thought is was nice of them to share the experience. We walked down to the lower observation deck for more pictures and were told by a man familiar with the area that there was another observation area down at the river that would afford us a better view of the falls. So off we traipsed, little thinking that what goes down must come back up. The walk down was beautiful as this small two acre park is heavily wooded and all natural and with the rain dripping down reminded me of reading about a "forest primeval". The walk to the bottom level deck is one-half mile and wasn't bad despite being very wet. We took a few more pictures and as we were coming back we saw a deer grazing between the two huge pipes carrying the river water to part of the power plant. She was so still we almost missed her, but I'm including the shot of her between the pipes (you'll have to look carefully) and then the zoom shot of her.

Of course, the hard part was working our way back up the hill. You would have thought we both just quit smoking a few days ago instead of several years the way we were huffing and puffing! But it really is an impressive set of falls. The water drops 270 feet into a 65 foot deep pool of water. That's 100 feet higher than Niagara Falls! There's a huge blow-back of mist from the falls, so if the sun had been out I'm sure there would have been a great rainbow effect as well. There are picnic tables on the grounds and a gift shop, so you could easily spend a couple of hours there.