8AM - 8PM
Mostly sunny. Sometimes it felt 55 degrees, sometimes 75. Dry heat!
Instead of blogging about Yesler Swamp this week, I'll be blogging about our class adventure to the east cascades! More specifically, we went to Ellensburg, WA and mostly stopped at places along canyon road which runs along the Yakima river. I have family that lives in eastern Washington and we would always take I-90 to I-82 and be on our way, but one time I remember my dad and I took canyon road for some reason and I really enjoyed it. The way the road curves along with the river full of people fishing and floating downstream was a really fun sight for me. To get the chance to go back and learn some natural history of the area was really a treat.
We departed Wallace Hall a little after 8 AM in three 12 passenger vans. Our first stop real stop (after Carl's Jr. where we saw what we think to be a Golden eagle) was at a site next to the Yakima river. We walked across a bouncy suspension bridge and immediately started seeing many neat looking plants and birds. We got lucky with the day we came because it looked as though it had just rained a day or two before we arrived due to the soil being softer than usual, so many of the plants had just recently bloomed. I've mostly only got pictures from one of the places we stopped at, but this stop we saw a lot of tall sagebrush. There were also many species that I wouldn't normally associate with the east cascades like cottonwoods because they require a lot of water and the place we were at only gets about 20 or less inches of rain per year because of the rain shadow it is in. We were right along the river though, so that supply of water keeps these plants going. In general it was much more green than I had expected. We also saw many animals at this stop. The first thing we saw was a big black beetle that was much bigger than anything you would typically find over here. After crossing the bridge and some train tracks we observed birds for a few minutes. We spotted swallows, cowbirds, lazuli buntings, yellow breasted chat, waxwings, turkey vultures, ravens, goldfinches, and I'm sure more that I am forgetting. The lazuli buntings were my favorite. They weren't too shy or scarce and their coloring was really beautiful. The turkey vultures were fun to observe. They really didn't do much other than soar around, but with their wingspan being as big as it is really makes them seem so majestic. The shyest birds were the yellow breasted chats. We could hear them and we stopped for awhile and tried playing back their song to get them to come out but we really didn't have a whole lot of luck. As we were getting ready to head back to the vans me and a small group got lucky and finally did get a good look at one through binoculars for about 5-10 seconds before he disappeared into the brush again. Other than birds, we saw a garter snake and four llamas. One of my classmates was able to go off the beaten path and find the garter snake and I'm really glad he did because it was so cool to see it up close. The llamas on the other hand were just being walked by a few people - the trip was already going to be memorable, but people walking llamas put the icing on the cake. After eating we took off to spot number 2.
Garter snake! I never held it and I can't say that I regret that decision.
Our 2nd stop was probably my favorite because the diversity of living things amazed me so much. I've been in many car rides in eastern Washington and all these hills look exactly the same. Some sage brush, some tumbleweed, nothing exciting. I was so wrong! It helped that everything was in bloom, but it was still very impressive. The ground is all lithosol kind of soil which is a rocky volcanic kind of soil that some plants apparently do very well in. I was also impressed by how much difference there was simply at the small site we were at. On the slope of the hill there was much more stiff sagebrush and other plants, some of which were tall and forced you to move around them. On top of the hill, it was all flat and had many more wildflowers and things like that. We didn't walk any further than 100 yards from the road, but the changes due to slope were still very noticeable. For this section I'll list the pictures and try to do some descriptions.
Here are a bunch of caterpillars! These little nests they had were all over the place and each one had quite a few caterpillars on them.
Here is what I believe to be Sulfur Buckwheat. It was relatively common at this site and gave the hillside a nice color.
This is the stiff sagebrush I believe. It is much shorter than the tall sagebrush we saw at our first stop. One thing I forgot to mention is that the leaves on sagebrush really have interesting smells - mostly minty.
This is some Old man's beard. I don't know if it was named that because it is suppose to feel like an old man's beard, but it does indeed feel very soft. It feels like how I would imagine a cloud to feel like if that helps or makes any sense.
Here is some scat just for fun! A deer maybe? I don't know my scat very well.
Here are two pictures side by side of bitterroot. It's latin name is lewisia rediviva, named after Meriwether Lewis because he liked it so much. I heard they were edible so I was excited to try one until I heard they had to be cooked. These were mostly located on the upper plateau of the hillside and about half had bloomed and half looked close to blooming.
Here is an unfocused picture of wild onion.
This is what the top of the hill looked like. Very flat and not much growing any higher than your ankle.
Horned lizard! Someone spotted him and the same classmate that grabbed the snake was able to catch this guy for everyone to see. I always think of lizards as being more salamander shaped and skinny, but this guy was pretty round. For the most part the lizard was calm and let people pass him around pretty easily.
The last stop of the trip was along a smallish creek that ended at a cool waterfall! This stop was fun because we got to see these ponderosa pines that we've been hearing so much about in class. One of our TA's is very knowledgeable of ponderosa pines and was able to share some cool facts about them with us. He told us that based on the size of the bark chunks and how far away they are from each other can tell you roughly how old the trees are. For each tree he could give a rough estimate of how old the tree was which was pretty cool. He also showed us that the ones that get a lot of sunlight have bark that smells like vanilla. This was true! We also saw a very tall ponderosa pine snag that he really enjoyed because it's trees like that in which a new kind of niche is created for many animals. There were also Douglas firs at this stop which is rare for eastern Washington but with the right conditions seems to have worked out for them.
Here is a picture from atop the waterfall at the valley of ponderosa pines and cottonwoods.
This is just a neat picture from next to the top of the waterfall. I don't think we were suppose to hike to the edges of cliffs, but it was worth it!
After that stop we made our way back home. This field trip was super fun and I can't wait for more chances to get over the mountains and see what the east side of the state has to offer.
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