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I’m an avid world traveler, photographer, software developer, and digital storyteller.

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35
Lyons Ferry State Park
35

Lyons Ferry State Park

south of Washtucna, Washington
visited 21 May 2021
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Once upon a time, there was a ferry here. It’s long since been superceded by a bridge which is surprisingly narrow by today’s standards. Lyons Ferry State Park offers a view of the abandoned historic ferry and expansive views of the Snake and Palouse Rivers.

I visited on a spring weekend and found the park delightfully quiet.

A calm lakeshore at Lyons Ferry State Park with grassy foreground, leafy green trees and reeds along the water’s edge, and rounded basalt bluffs rising across the water under a dramatic sky filled with billowing white and gray clouds.

Sometime long ago, somebody decided — at what must have been great expense — to build a pier out to an island in the middle of the river. Whatever purpose that served has long since passed, but the walkway remains as a hiking trail that I enjoyed:

A dirt path lined with green brush and dry grasses leads across a narrow spit of land flanked by river water on both sides, with flat-topped basalt cliffs and grassy green hills rising beyond under a dramatic sky full of gray and white clouds.
A wide panoramic view across a calm river at Lyons Ferry State Park, flanked by arid, treeless hills and basalt cliffs under a dramatic sky full of broken gray and white clouds. Green sagebrush and scrubby vegetation grow along the sandy foreground shoreline, with a prominent rock formation jutting into the water and a distant bridge visible on the left.
A dramatic, heavily clouded sky looms over a calm river at Lyons Ferry State Park, with a steel truss bridge spanning the water and dry, flat-topped basalt hills rising beyond it. Green reeds, brush, and trees fill the foreground along the shoreline.
A dirt trail winds through sagebrush and green grass toward a calm lake flanked by dark basalt cliffs under a heavy, overcast gray sky at Lyons Ferry State Park in eastern Washington. White wildflowers dot the foreground, with leafy shrubs on the right and rolling hills in the distance.
A panoramic view of a river flowing between arid basalt bluffs and grassy wetlands under a dramatic, overcast sky with heavy gray clouds. A rocky shoreline and sagebrush line the near bank, while a low mesa-like hill and distant bridges span the horizon beyond the water.
A wide river cuts through treeless, rolling hills of dry golden-brown grass and basalt cliffs under a heavily overcast sky of layered gray clouds, with the choppy water filling the foreground.
A calm river fringed with tall green reeds and bleached driftwood logs in the foreground, with leafy trees along the far bank and rugged basalt bluffs rising in the distance under a dramatic, overcast gray sky.
A tall steel railroad trestle spans the horizon above a calm river at Lyons Ferry State Park, framed by dramatic gray overcast clouds, rolling arid hills, and lush green shrubs and wildflowers along the water’s edge in the foreground.

As for the historic ferry, there was lots of signage such as this warning visitors to stay away from the structure itself:

If this is the ferry, I’m not inclined to doubt them:

An old, overgrown barge or dock structure sits half-submerged in a calm river at Lyons Ferry State Park, with vegetation sprouting from it. Dramatic gray clouds fill the sky above dry, rolling hills and green trees along the far shore, with reeds in the foreground.

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