Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: Cowiche Canyon

Friday, May 6, 2016

Cowiche Canyon

Cowiche Creek

Cowiche Canyon in April 2015

Click here for more photos of Cowiche Canyon.

Cowiche Canyon is located in Yakima WA. It is quite a stunning & an easy walk. Even though the surrounding area is heavily developed in housing & orchards, it looks perfectly natural. The canyon encloses the view to conceal everything but the native plants, the landscape & the wide, level path with 9 sturdy bridges over Cowiche Creek. (In case you wonder, Cowiche is pronounced: cow-itchy.) This trail was once a railroad bed. It runs slightly more than 3 miles long & connects to 4 other trails. The Cowiche Canyon Conservancy is the owner & caretaker of the trail. It's mission is to preserve & restore shrub-steppe & riparian terrain within the Cowiche Creek & Naches River watershed areas in the Yakima Valley. It own 2,000 acres & has a conservation easement on another 3,000 acres of land.

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About This Blog

This blog began in 2008 as Metropolitan Gardens to provide information on gardening in Seattle & places like it. Click on Gardening in Cascadia. The blog expanded to include Parks P-Patches Public Gardens in the US, Canada & Europe. Then Nature was added. (The difference between nature & gardens is intent. Nature happens. Gardens are planned.) Many recent posts are not about Seattle, or even Cascadia. They are Urban Landscape: streetscape & architecture. Cascadia is the region including the Cascade Mountains of Washington & Oregon. If you want to contact the blogger, leave a message in comments. Comments are moderated & private messages will not be posted.

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The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.