7 Stunning Local Wonders You Should Visit This Summer With Kids

If you don’t know the geology, you might miss the wonder of the Palouse, a region of gently rolling wheat fields in southeastern Washington that contrasts with the nearby Scablands, barren areas too soil-poor to support agriculture. But both the pastoral scene and the bare rock were formed by the same natural force: flooding so strong it defies imagination.

Beginning 20,000 years ago, the Glacial Lake Missoula, in what is now western Montana, covered an area the size of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined. Glaciers formed an ice dam that caused the water level in the lake to rise. Every few centuries, pressure from the lake caused the ice dam to collapse, resulting in floods so big they caused earthquakes. Containing as much water as all of the rivers in the world today, the floods scoured the Scablands and deposited fertile loess soils from the lake bottom in the Palouse.

Today, a great spot from which to view the Palouse is Steptoe Butte. To get a sense of the Missoula floods, visit Palouse Falls, where the current water level is a dripping faucet compared to the floodwaters that carved the canyon it flows through today. Steptoe Butte is about an hour's drive south of Spokane, or 35 minutes from Pullman, home of Washington State University.

Next up: Long Beach

^{Image credit: Jim Choate/Flickr CC}