I pulled into the launch site in Richland only to find out that a boat show was starting in the morning. There were at least 50 shiny new boats at the park. I was told to get to the launch early and there would not be a problem.

So I got there before sunrise. On this part of the Columbia, the McNary dam (25 miles downstream) basically eliminates any current. I headed upstream for the Hanford Reach.

There is the dome of the old Hanford reactor. No mushroom cloud today.

Then the river started to get lively. This is not a green can buoy. It is marking an underwater obstruction.

There were quite a few obstructions and the current could be challenging.

Here is somebody who may have misjudged the current.

Even in the calmer parts of the river, boils of water would surface and make a disturbing splash. Watching my sonar, I saw that there were underwater basalt formations that changed depths instantly from 40 to 25 feet and back again. That is what causes the chaotic boils on the surface.

The terrain starts to get interesting.

This looked vaguely like an old fortification, but it is simply the way that the layers of volcanic ash erode. Unlike the basalt cliffs of most of the Columbia, this area has soft clay-like cliffs. The current kept me busy at the helm and photos took second place.

The cliffs go on for several miles.

It's hard to get a feel for the size of the cliffs from a picture. The trees at the base are 20 to 30 foot cottonwoods.

There were more cliff swallows here than on the basalt cliffs. Huge colonies that would swarm out like bees.

They were here because their nest building material (mud) was readily available. The volcanic ash cliffs actually soaked up water several feet and had a dark wet rim around the bottom, as seen here. The swallows are all flapping their wings because they don't have enough body mass to drive their beaks into the packed ash. They have to "fly" into it.

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Several miles past the cliffs, the terrain has opened up, but the river starts to get standing waves. This is Coyote Rapids. Ehh.

I decided to shut off the motor and drift back (partly because I was really low on gas). Mule deer, coyotes, etc., would suddenly stand up and watch me drift past at 2-4 knots.

I drifted into this eddy and decided to tie up. Nothing but grass to tie on to and I didn't want to leave the boat tied up only to grass. I hadn't seen another boat all day (and didn't until I got back to Richland).

Kind of a remote area to watch your boat float away down stream.

Fortunately, there were metal mooring pegs every 100 feet.