Wahkeena Falls

Wahkeena Falls, coming up on your right — and after all the straight plunges you've watched leap clean off the cliffs, this one's a different creature. Wahkeena doesn't drop. It dances. Two hundred and forty-two feet of water spread into a wide white fan, tumbling down the basalt in a dozen braided steps instead of one clean fall, every ledge throwing it a little wider. That's a cascade, not a plunge, and it's the prettiest one on the road. The locals knew it long before you got here: Wahkeena is a Yakama word, and it means most beautiful. There's a shaded picnic area right at the turnoff — a fine place to pull in and stretch your legs, and a fine place to know that this ground came to you the same way Multnomah did. Simon Benson, the lumberman who handed his waterfalls to the public so no one could ever fence them off, gave this one too. Walk out onto the little stone footbridge they've laid across the creek at its base, look up the wet face of it, and watch two hundred and forty-two feet of water come apart into lace.