Palouse Falls State Park
What you’ll find in this post:
Our trip report from Palouse Falls State Park in winter
Great place to stay in Walla Walla, Washington
A 377 foot waterfall set in an Eastern Washington Canyon.
One of the reasons I absolutely love living in Washington State is the varying biomes we can get to within a few hours drive. From Seattle you can drive 3 hours in varying directions and end up in a desert, summit a mountain, discover tide pools along the coast, experience subalpine terrain, and even explore a real rainforest.
Palouse Falls State Park is about a 4 hour drive from the Seattle area. There isn’t a ton of hiking of well marked hiking trails and I would avoid venturing down into the canyon, as it appears it could be a dangerous hike. We definitely took advantage of walking around the top of the canyon observation viewpoints and took an absurd amount of photos of the waterfall and Palouse River Canyon.
The canyon was created by the great Missoula Floods about 11,700 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
We took this trip on a Saturday in February, arriving just after noon. There was still parking and there were minimal people in the park. I’ve heard there can be a line to enter the park on weekends during the summer.
We saw our friends, the yellow bellied Marmots. These little nuggets are so much fun to watch. It appears they built their house on the side of the cliff and run up to spy on and greet visitors.
Marmots can live up to 16 years in the wild, typically they hibernate in the winter in colder climates, but we saw the group sunning on the rocks in February. These marmots are similar to the marmots at Mount Rainier National Park, and you can usually only see them in from September until May in that park.
We explored the park for a couple hours and saw trains go by about once every hour.
And don’t forget to watch for flocks of wild turkey’s running across the road on your way in!
This is a perfect adventure for a weekend escape from Seattle or Portland. We did this as a long day trip, but next time I’d stay about an hour south in the charming town of Walla Walla at The Finch Hotel for the weekend. A great town full of tasting rooms from local wineries this region has to offer.
Protips:
The Instagram worthy bus off the side of highway has been moved and is no longer there.
Parking is limited & Discover Pass is required.
There can be long waits to enter the park on the weekends.
