Switchbacks and Summits

After absorbing the stunning beauty that is Glacier National Park, our plan was to head to the parks in Washington beginning with North Cascades.  It was hard to leave Glacier and I wasn't sure how to feel about the Cascades.  It isn't a park that comes up in conversation much and I was feeling like nothing could compete with Glacier.

To get to Washington, we had to drive through the skinny part of Idaho.  We could have done the drive in a day but were feeling the need for a recharge, so we picked a moderately large town on the map and started driving.  By mid-afternoon we were in Sandpoint, ID and were really pleased with our random guessing.  It was a great town, very progressive and tourist-friendly and was right on the water.  Michael and I soon discovered that a lot of the people visiting downtown had actually come by boat.  It's the sort of place where everyone wears their bathing suits every day of the summer.  We found a reasonable hotel, did lots of laundry, and enjoyed the unlimited showering before heading back to town for dinner.  Continuing the trend, we beelined for the local pizzeria called Bricks 'n' Barley which used all local and fresh ingredients.  The restaurant itself had a nice vibe and a relaxed, although crowded, porch.  In addition to pizza, they had cold salads, so we ordered a green bean, pine nut, and vinaigrette salad that was delicious.  The pizza was great, as well, although a little bit too much on the thin-crust end of the spectrum.  The only odd thing was that they used paper plates/towels, and plastic utensils as their dishwasher was a building over from the kitchen.  Of course, that didn't phase us too much as we had been "conserving" dishes the whole trip and just went into sharing mode.  Next stop: our bed.

We headed out the next morning to lots more of this:

Driving through Idaho and eastern Washington

It was broken up, however, by the Grand Coulee Dam which was the world's largest concrete structure when it was completed in 1941.  The plaque claims it still is the largest, but we weren't entirely convinced (Wikipedia notes it is one of the largest structures).  Either way (and despite the negative implications of such dams), it was still pretty cool to see the power of FDR's CCC.  There were definitely many moments on this trip where we wished the CCC still existed.

Grand Coulee Dam

Finally on to North Cascades.  The Cascades National Park is actually a complex of three parks overseen by the NPS: the Ross Lake National Recreation Area, North Cascades NP, and the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area - most of which is also included in the S. Mather Wilderness.  The unfortunate side of this is that we never actually set foot in the national park proper as it was a nine-mile hike to even enter the park.

Lake Anne

We started our visit by a quick hike to Lake Anne in the National Forest.  It was a pretty view of a nice glacial lake.

After the hike and lunch on a section of the PCT, we drove the main road through the park complex.  There were some nice views of the water in the glacial valleys, a dense turquoise, but much of the landscape was marred by huge dams and power lines.

We did the obligatory stop at the visitors' center where we oogled over pictures of the forest hundreds of years ago.  Yes, that's a house built into a stump.

The park ranger at the center told us that the hike we wanted to do was covered with dense snow, but she recommended another hike outside the park and a gorgeous county park where we could camp. We reluctantly heeded her advice and left the park although we hadn't spent much time there.  The place where we camped was a beautiful park next to the river and we saw a bald eagle swooping over the water while we cooked our bratwursts over the fire.  We also saw a beaver up close and personal, lazily swimming.

Stella's rear windshield

The next day we drove eight miles and nearly 4000' of elevation to the trailhead on Sauk Mountain in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.  Stella was just a bit dirty and worn out!

We trekked the remaining 1200'.  The trail was impressive with 26 switchbacks and some amazing views.  Unfortunately, I didn't summit as we hit a sketchy snowfield and I didn't trust my Chacos (or my balance).  Michael, however, did and was rewarded with 360 degree views of Mount Baker and the high Cascades.

After Sauk Mountain, we headed to Rainier to enjoy some more high altitude views.

Note: our posts are slightly out of order as I was slow finishing mine.