Saturday, June 9th - Jet Boat up the Snake River

We ate a nice breakfast at Hazel's, a locally owned cafe here in Clarkston, Washington. Then we took a short drive around the two cities. We purposefully drove thru Lewis and Clark State College in Lewiston. Just last week, LCSC hosted the NAIA Baseball World Series for small colleges.

It was an overcast afternoon, filled with naps and blogging. At 4:30, we drove the short distance to the starting point for the Beamer's Hells Canyon jet boat trips. Several weeks ago, we signed up for their evening, four hour, dinner cruise.

The cruise was nice but, not exceptional. As expected, the jet boats are fast and very loud. We made several stops or slowdowns to see a petroglyph and other interesting features of the Snake River. We traveled 35 miles upstream but stopped short of entering Hells Canyon itself. We ate at the Heller Bar Lodge, also owned by Beamer's. They served salmon and prime rib buffet style. The dinner was filling. We then returned downriver to Clarkston by 8:30pm.

The Snake River Canyon, at 1.5 miles deep (at its deepest) is the deepest canyon in North America (the Grand Canyon is "only" 1 mile deep). I had thought that we would see some VERY dramatic geologic features. I thought wrong. The DEEP part of the Snake River Canyon is 70 miles further south of where we turned around. My mistake. The sceney was pretty, not dramatic.