The North Cascades

After much studying of maps, we decided to stay in Washington to go through the North Cascades instead of right up into BC to Hope.  We are so glad we did.  One of the most remarkable mountain areas we’ve ever seen.  You drive up following the Skagit River, which is by far the prettiest river I’ve seen yet.  It beats the Hoh, which had the pale light blue color from Glacial “Flour”. 

Our first glimpse of the mountains here.
This range was one of the last places to be
mapped in the United States (in the 60's).

This was just one of many waterfalls along the
road.  The water wants to get to the Pacific! 

There are several dams up here that were
built in the 1920's to bring electricity to the
Seattle area.

Can you believe this color?!!!

We wanted to stay at Colonial Creek Campground which is another one of the 10 best Washington campgrounds.  It was lovely but we had a hard time finding a site that was large enough and level enough.  We finally found one on the river, even though it wasn’t very level.  Even with our chock blocks under the tires, we were probably at an 8 or 9 degree slope.  We turned the mattress around, which helped a lot considering that otherwise, Jim would have ended up on the floor in the middle of the night.  We managed and it was worth it to be so close to this gorgeous river/lake:  the Skagit empties into Diablo Lake.

Maxine just barely made it in.

We watched families of geese swim on by.

We set up our chairs here and had a ringside seat.

We took a wonderful hike along the Thunder Basin Creek which was every bit as beautiful as the rain forests in the Peninsula.  Mosses and ferns were everywhere.  I just finished reading The Signature of all Things, which is a novel about a female moss expert who lived in the 1700’s so the mosses just screamed out at me to pay attention.

We eventually found a sweet little nook by the river where we enjoyed a bottle of wine and a little down time.

After a few days at Colonial Creek, we were anxious to see the rest of the Cascades (though, of course, that could take a lifetime!)  The North Cascades are really three different parklands:  The North Cascades National Park, the Ross Lake National Recreation Area and the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area.  We couldn’t believe that there are actually 300 glaciers here!  They call it the Alps of America and it well deserves that name.  It would be wonderful to spend a whole summer here, exploring trails, mountain lakes and streams.  Sorry to say, we only had a few days.