Central Washington is wide open and vastly different than the moist, wet western half of the state.

Washington’s nickname is the Evergreen State. Well, that is for everyone who lives in the Cascades or west of them. For those in the rain shadow to the east, the climate is distinctly dry, parched, and a genuine desert ecosystem in areas. Massive irrigation, thanks to the dams built during and after the Depression era, turned a lot of the Columbia River Basin into productive agricultural areas, which grow everything from cherries to wine grapes to apples. I love the terrain. Right now, a lot of the dry hills north of where this photo was taken, near Vantage, are either on fire or at risk of fire, with the greatest fires the state has seen. This photo and others of the state’s many faces can be found on my Washington state photo gallery. (Click on the photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)