This is a fantastic choice for those gray spring days you just need to see the sun!

The trail is mostly flat with a couple of hills and wide on an old wagon road. It's amazing central washington scenery with a small (I assume seasonal) waterfall at the end. 

The trail is fairly rocky for the first half and sandy for the second half so it isn't quite as easy as it sounds. The purple wildflowers are everywhere right now!

Ethan, Karen, & I along with Brenda & Jonah returned to the diatomite mines between Echo Basin & I-90 that Ethan, Karen, & I had visited early in January.  For this hike we walked Babcock Bench south past all the sand dunes to the sidecanyon below I-90 and then up the canyon to the mines (just places where the overlying soil has been scrapped away from the diatomite) visible from the freeway.  The little canyon was very nice with a couple of pour-offs and even a little waterfall.  These mines were disappointing, so we walked over the hill to the mines with a view out over the Frenchman Coulee area for lunch.  Karen, Ethan, & I all agreed that there seemed to be quite a bit less opalized chert scattered about than when we were here in Jan.  We lingered over an hour, then headed down the coulee that opens at the top of the first sand dunes and made our way down the dunes and back to the cars.  There was a scattering of wildflowers, but nothing in profusion.  We saw a coyote and a group of hikers in the distance as well as quite a few people on the sand on our way back and lots of climbers on Sunshine Wall.  All in all we walked about 5.5 miles with a whopping 650' gain.  The day was partly sunny & warm.

We got a bit of a late start, leaving Bellevue around 8am and arriving some time around 11am. (We stopped in Ellensburg for gas and drove down the Old Vantage Highway first to see the sights.) There were a good number of cars both in the climbing area and at the lower trailhead, but there were also still a few parking spots left. It looked like most, if not all, camping spots were taken. The rocks looked a bit like they were covered in rainbow ants because there were so many climbers out!

We (my dog and I) started in the climbing area and hiked up onto the butte. There are a few wildflowers starting to bloom. The views down to the river were awesome. Once we got away from the climbing areas, we didn't really see other people, which was lovely. We hiked off the back end of the butte down toward Echo Basin. This was a little sketchy feeling because it's a steep drop off and there was a lot of loose rock. So, take your time, wear shoes with good tread, and bring your trekking poles! 

The trails in Echo Basin form sort of a loop and we went counter clockwise. It started out as the usual dusty, slightly rocky, old road. About 1/4 mile in it changed to sand and my dog lost her little puppy mind and started zooming as soon as her little paws hit the sand. Eventually, we got to the sand dune, which was super cool! I had no idea this was here. It looked like there were the remains of a fire ring here. With how dry this area is, a fire seems like a terrible idea, so I dismantled it before we left.

We continued the loop toward the unnamed dry falls. When we got there, I saw there was a family with small children and a dog down in the little "pond" area. Not wanting to disturb their family time, we admired the dry falls from a distance and continued on. We finished the loop and headed back up the butte. I will say, finding our way back across the butte was more challenging. It was harder to keep track of the footpath. Do your best to only walk where there is an established footpath. The plants in this area are quite fragile and can take AGES to grow back if stepped on.

Back at the parking lot, the number of cars and climbers looked the same. I used the vault toilet before leaving. There was quite a bit of trash inside the bathroom and not a lot of TP. Consider bringing your own, just to be safe. All around a great day, with the nice surprise of the sand dune. Just be sure to pack out your trash! It's windy out there and trash will blow away into the wilderness quite quickly. Have fun and be safe!

This is mostly a flower report. There are some yellow bells, desert parsley, and sagebrush buttercups blooming. The highlight (for me) were the first woolly-pod milk-vetches of the year (Astragalus purshii, pictures 1 and 2). Many arrowleaf balsamroot plants are coming out of the ground (picture 3). 

I did a large figure 8 starting at the parking area with the privies. I most enjoyed the trails around the climbing areas, the grande ronde lava flow pillars are beautiful. The trail dropping off of that peninsula to the west was steep but doable; even though it was gravelly, there were enough embedded rocks to keep you from slipping. Caltopo shows a route that parallels I-90, some of that route is there, but much of it is gone. I ended up brush-whacking or following deer trails for most of the way (deer trails are nice and soft, their hooves dig up the ground). Also, I had to limbo through 2 barbed-wire fences, and in taking a second look at the map, I can see that this is private property. 

My husband and I returned to Frenchman Coulee today. I wrote a trip report a couple of weeks ago about the sand dunes in this area. This time we explored another area from the same parking area near Echo Basin. We parked along the road near a Discovery Pass sign & gate. From there we headed northeast along an old jeep road. We followed the path which took us toward the cliffs at the north side of the basin. We wanted to get a closer look at some large rocks we had seen in the distance. From there we headed toward the base of the waterfall (also seen from the distance on our drive in).

It was a beautiful day, surprisingly warm, with minimal wind. We mostly wandered, following the main jeep trail and some game paths. I just love the understated beauty of this area. And we only saw two other groups all afternoon. Round trip it was a 5 mile hike & took 2.5 hours.