15-Jul-2000 -- I decided to do a weekend road trip and visit some confluence points around Northeast Oregon. The first of these was 46N 117W. This point is located in the canyons of Northeast Oregon and Southeast Washington. While these canyons don't have the verticle walls you might see in the desert southwest, they are deep all the same.

Out of Clarkston, I headed south towards Asotin and then along the Snake River Road to where the Grande Ronde River joins with the Snake River. At this point the road follows the Grande Ronde for a ways before turning up along Joseph Creek. The closest the road gets to the confluence point is around a mile away. This point is actually in Oregon, though just before getting to the confluence point, you must cross back into Washington.

The road lies at the bottom of the canyon and the confluence point is near the top. It's a good thing I was there pretty early in the day, since it would have been blazing trying to hike up the slopes in the direct afternoon sun. Except for some thorny patches, poison ivy, plants which considered me a fabulous seed dispersal mechanism, and the fact that it was 1500 feet of up, there was not really any difficulty involved in getting to the confluence point from the road.

I took a number of images at the confluence point and stitched them together digitally into a large panorama. This gives a fairly good idea of what the terrain looks like.