Dusty Lake, Eastern Washington State

by bluesboots on April 20, 2015

We’ve been blessed with some incredible spring weather this year, and I’ve been taking full advantage of it! J. and I headed out early Thursday morning to the Ancient Lakes area near Quincy. J. thought it would be better to hike a little bit further to Dusty Lake, that we’d have a better chance of fewer crowds, and she was definitely right. We set up camp near the lake, and some kind person had left a bit of firewood for us to use, so we were able to have a nice fire that evening. We spent the afternoon exploring the coulee, looking for birds and animals and wildflowers. We saw many different species of birds, a few wildflowers, a yellow-bellied marmot, turtles, and a lot of bats (I LOVE bats!). After a very lazy evening, I crawled into my tent and slept pretty well, like I always do when backpacking.

: Yellow-bellied marmot

: turtles!

: Gorgeous campsite with my wonderful Nemo tent

: Horned sparrow

The next morning we packed up early and headed to Beezley Hills Nature Conservancy. Wow! Weather was perfect and wildflowers were at their prime. This is one of the largest concentrations of hedgehog cactus in the state, and they were just coming into bloom. A gorgeous area to wander around and enjoy a different side of Washington than I’m used to.

Next we drove out to Rock Island Grade and drove several miles up a steep dirt road for some beautiful views of the canyon and the Columbia River Gorge, with more wildflowers. There was a beautiful herd of free range horses that I had to stop and get photos of too. All in all, a wonderful April backpacking and wildflower hunting trip.