It's Outdoor Wednesday!

I've told you before, and I'll tell you again, there are three states I love with all my heart,  Oregon, Washington and Nevada.
I love Washington because I grew up there---I am sentimental about it and nothing can compete with sentiment.

My favorite river is there  (my middle son laughed at this--he doesn't think people really have favorite rivers.  I do tho), The  Columbia.   
My 2nd favorite river is the Snake River and my 3rd favorite is the Yakima River.  (yes, I am being kinda silly and ornery about having favorite rivers---can one really?)

Anyway, I grew up where all 3 of those rivers converged.  There was water, water everywhere!  (and yet is some weird paradox, the land is arid and dry, we use irrigation to grow all those apples and peaches and wheat )

Sometimes it looks like this:

Sometimes it looks like this:

But they are always doing this:

To get this:

There is an island in the Columbia River, in my hometown, called Bateman Island.

I will be honest here and tell you that when I was a teenager, we had parties out there---at that time you could drive out there, so we did, and then we partied down!  It's a wonder someone didn't get in a accident driving back and forth on this little one car lane.

Bateman Island is an island located on the Columbia River between the cities of Richland and Kennewick, Washington. It is approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) long and 0.5 miles (0.80 km) wide (160 acres (65 ha)) and is part of the city of Richland

Lewis and Clark mentioned Bateman Island in their journals in 1805. William Clark and two other men made their way towards the mouth of the Yakima River, but due to the time the farthest they got was Bateman Island.

In 2002 thanks to support by Bechtel Hanford and with help from many volunteers, about 27 tons worth of beer cans, and other debris left there over the last 60 years was removed.

Geez!  We drank a lot of beer!!  (27 tons?)

It's nice to have it all cleaned up now.  You can't drive out onto it anymore, but you can walk.  In May, the Handyman and I took our morning walk out there to do some bird-watching.

I had to get a list of the birds to remember what I saw, as I had forgotten a notebook.

(of course I didn't see all of these--just a few as a matter of fact)

Here are some photos of what we saw on Bateman Island on our  6am walk.

(it looks completely different than I remember from my high school nighttime keggar days.)

Now it's beautiful

I am linking up with Outdoor Wednesday hosted by A Southern Daydreamer.

Check it out for some beautiful outdoor photos from all over!