September 24 - Hells Canyon

This morning we are docked in Clarkston, Washington where we will be taking our long anticipated jetboat ride up the Snake River and up through Hell’s Canyon National Recreation Area.  The Columbia and the Snake have many dams and water control systems along their length so much of this length of the Snake is not a wild river.  However, as we sent farther upstream we did eventually get to the wild river section.

Hell’s Canyon is the deepest gorge in North America, deeper than the Grand Canyon.  Unfortunately for us, the deepest section of the gorge is upstream of the Hell’s Canyon dam and we aren’t sailing through that section.  However, the section we did travel through was very lovely.

We saw lots of rafters who had come down the Salmon River and farther upstream on the Snake.

We stopped at dock run by the National Recreation Park service for a bathroom break and a bit of wandering.  The stop had nice views down river

and an old root cellar from when the area was a farmstead.  There were lots of old fruit trees there as well.

Along the way we saw geese flying along the canyon walls,

an eagle (but too far to get a photo, herons in the rocks along the river,

and a flock of turkeys.

We also saw some female big horned sheep that had come down to the river to drink.  How exciting.

The boat also pulled up close to a waterfall,

and some Native American petroglyphs. 

It was a very fun ride even if we didn’t get to travel through the deepest part of the gorge.

          *************************************
More Hells Canyon 
*************************************

This evening we had a wonderful speaker from the nearby Nez Perce tribe.  His talk was very interesting and he also played some native instruments, drum and flute.  This was probably the most interesting of all of the entertainment we had on the boat.