More Washington (08-28-24)

 But first…..When we take the Bronco on rough roads, we need to air the tires down so the ride isn’t so rough. The compressor we have in the Bronco is slowwwwwwwww, so Paul wanted a new one. We were planning on staying at the Mt. Vernon Elks lodge, so we decided to make an Amazon “run”. Usually we would have things delivered to an Amazon Locker (great invention) but the new compressor is too heavy for that. Luckily the camp host at the Mt Vernon Elks said we could have it shipped to her and she would hold it for us.

Once the order was made, we had a few days to explore before landing in Mt. Vernon. We stopped at a small federal campground that allows reservations, near Baker Lake. I don’t think we saw much of Baker Lake, but we did capture glimpses of Mount Baker.

We did a short hike that day, after taking the Bronco down some sketchy “roads”. 

At the end of the hike was a hot springs. We never know whether there is really a spring that you can get into on these hikes- this one definitely had a hot spring, loaded with people. We said hello and kept going.

The following day we drove up one of the main roads in Mt. Baker National Forest,  where we did two hikes. The first one was a short trail around a small pond. I think it was paved. It was about a mile long,

As we drove up the mountain, it was “clear” that the weather was NOT clear and we wouldn’t have the views of Mt Baker we were hoping for.

Our second hike was about two miles long, down and around Bagley Lake.

The fog was so thick, it was hard to see much of anything beyond the trail. It had a really eerie feeling.

I actually thoroughly enjoyed this hike and all the spookiness that went with it. 

Our original stay in Mt. Vernon was intended to be just a few days, but we extended it twice. We had some errands to do, and there is plenty to see in this area. When making the plans for this area we debated back and forth whether we wanted to spend any time in Olympic National Park and the San Juan Islands.

We have been to that area before, although not for a long visit. In the end we opted to do a day trip through the San Juan’s and skip Olympic. Instead, we booked 11 days in Mt. Rainier National Park, which we have never visited.

Our day trip took us first to Fidalgo Island where we hiked a 2.5 mile loop around Washington Park which sits right on Flounder Bay. In addition to enjoying the ocean views, it was fun to see a juvenile bald eagle fly directly over our heads. I didn’t think to get out the camera, I just enjoyed the fly by.

This land this park sits on was owned by Tonjes Havekost, who, when he died, bequeathed the land to the town, with instructions to “make my tomb a park”, and indeed, his tomb is in the park.

From there we headed to Whidbey Island where were investigated the forts that have been turned into state parks. 

Paul enjoys forts, and I enjoy the views.

Our option from there was to take a ferry across to the mainland, or turn around and drive back the way we came. We drove back the way we came.

As soon as we realized that the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery is an hour from Mt. Vernon, we booked a tour. This is my favorite wine.

The first thing I noticed was how spectacular the gardens are on the property. It turns out that one of the original owners, Nellie Stimpson, was a co-founder of FTD Florists. Her husband Fred, owned and ran a state of the art dairy farm.

The property was eventually bought by a corporation and turned into the winery that it is today. At that time, Washington was not known for it’s wines but after years of experimenting and wine production, in 1974, the Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling was entered into an international blind taste test- and won.

That win catapulted Washington on to the map in the wine industry, and is the reason Chateau Ste. Michelle is considered to be the founding winery in Washington. Their Riesling is apparently the best selling  Riesling in the world.

We assumed we would be touring a chateau, but the “tour” was more or less a special tasting. In fact it’s very clear that this property is laid out for the drinking of wine. They don’t bottle the wine here, nor do they grow the grapes here.

You can drink at a table inside, a private room inside, a table in the gardens, or a private cabana.

 

For over an hour, our guide taught us how to drink wine, and how the right kind of food can change the taste of a wine, and vise versa. One of the wines we tasted was a chardonnay- I am not a fan- but I will say, with the sharp cheese it was paired with, the flavor was considerably toned down for me. I also enjoyed the red blend- their Indian Wells has the tannins softened, making it more drinkable for non-red wine drinkers.

Apparently I am a messy wine taster, haha. The price I paid for being a bit “buzzed” before lunch was that I completely forgot to buy some wine.

The other thing this winery is known for is its summer concerts. They get big name performers. We watched as people started lining up at noon for a concert that starts at 7 pm. The performer was Pat Benatar.  The Beach Boys are performing next week.

After a much needed stop for lunch at a nearby restaurant, Paul and I headed to the Boeing Factory on the way home. Tours sell out months in advance, so all we could do is look around the visitor center, but they had a few interesting displays.

We made friends with a tour guide who wasn’t giving a tour, and he gave us a ton of information about the factory and the company.

He pointed out each building and what it was for, and the history of the factory and the company. Until 2023, only the 747 was built here, and in 1968, while the first one was being built the building it was built in was not finished and the workers actually got rained on while “inside” the building. The building, is in fact, the largest building (by volume) in the entire world.

The buildings for painting are across the way from the main buildings. Interestingly, he said that they do not use robots for painting- every plane is painted by people- they are suspended by wires to do the painting. Apparently the robots “saw” shadows as blank spots and would add more paint. More paint means more weight.

With a few days to kill before our Mt. Rainier reservations, we headed to the small town of Cle Elum. Mostly while there we hiked- what a shock. It seems to be our summer theme and I am ok with that.

Our longer hike was supposed to be 6 miles up Jolly Mountain trail, but at about the 1 mile mark we came across some awesome views, and after enjoying them for a while, we decided to head back down the hill.

Our second day we hiked a 3 mile trail to Cheese Rock in a nearby local park. The rock did resemble cheese somewhat, and also had some decent views.

In keeping with our exploring on days when we move to a new location, we made plans to visit Boulder Cave on the way to Mt. Rainier. The amount of people allowed to visit each day is limited so we had to get a reservation online ahead of time. The trail to and through the cave is about 1.5 miles long. As caves go it wasn’t terribly interesting. 

North Cascades Area (08-17-24)

 Having never been to North Cascades National Park, we definitely wanted to spend some time in this area. We started with a few days in Leavenworth Washington. From there our plan was to spend a few days on the east side of the park, in a small town called Twisp, and then head to the west side for a few days, staying in the town of Rockport WA.  Although that IS what we did, our plan did not go exactly smoothly.

Again with the heat being what it is, we booked a full service campground, which ended up being a KOA. These are so kid oriented we usually avoid them, but didn’t have much choice.

It was nice that this particular campground is on the Wenatchee River. Since the pool was literally wall to wall people, we chose to cool off in the river. We did that by signing up with a tubing company. Conveniently located within the KOA, we took our rented tubes, floated down the river for about two hours, and we driven back to the campground by the tubing company. I didn’t bring a camera, so I stole this off the web.

A surprising highlight for us at the KOA was an adults only cider tasting, with live music, hard cider, beer, and wine.

Leavenworth is known as a  Bavarian village,  complete with a downtown shopping area with restaurants etc. We did a drive by but didn’t feel like walking it, or shopping it.

Instead, our other adventure was a 4 mile hike around Icicle Gorge.

This was a great hike with lots to see and not too much elevation gain.

We did also attempt to swim at Lake Wenatchee State Park, but the crowds were such that they were actually turning people away at the entrance. Oh well.

The wildfires are never far from our thoughts- especially one of them in particular. The “Easy Fire” is in the center of North Cascades National Park, and it is so close to the main road that the road has been closed on and off for the last week or so. The day we left for Twisp, it was closed again, although for this leg of our journey, it didn’t affect us.

One of the perks of being in the camper is that we can more easily stop along the way to our destination and do a hike, or explore in some other way. On the way to Twisp we stopped in the town of Chelan, and hiked a 4 mile hike, up 1100 ft.  to a butte called Elephant Head.

It was extremely hot, with not much shade, but the views at the top made it worthwhile. It was smoky because there is yet another wildfire at the other end of Lake Chelan.

  Another perk was that once we made it down the hill to the camper, we could eat lunch in our “home”, and I got to take a shower before we hit the road.

Our “main event” in Twisp was the hike to Blue Lake, inside North Cascades NP.  On the way there we stopped at the scenic overlooks , but the smoke was pretty bad at that point in time. Still, it was worth the stop.

The hike to Blue Lake is almost 5 miles round trip, and 900 ft of gain. It is what we call a twofer…the views along the trail were awesome, and the destination was stunning, to say the least.

I took so many pictures, it’s hard to pick out just a few. Blue Lake is about the furthest we could go into the park due to the closed road, so we felt lucky that we could do the hike.

Our second day we elected to give the Bronco a work out instead of us- we took it on the backroads, headed to Slate Peak. The road there was interesting enough to keep Paul’s attention, but not so bad that I was (too) nervous.

The road ends near a fire tower (not in use right now) and the last half mile is done on foot.

Again, the views were really good, and we spent some time watching people down below us hike the 2640 mile long Pacific Crest Trail. The trail has a detour in this area because of the fires.

Our wish for the road to re-open so we could drive through North Cascades to the other side was not granted- it was still closed so we had to drive all the way down, back through Leavenworth, and north again, to Rockport- it added 5 hours of driving to our route.

Rockport is also on a river- the Skagit River. Without a doubt this is the most beautiful river I have ever seen.

The color comes from what is called glacial flour, or glacial silt, a fine dust that creates a glacier like look to the water. In fact, 370 glaciers feed this river in the summer time.  I oohed and ahhhed the entire time we were driving along the river.

We were headed towards Diablo Lake, exploring along the way there.

If I thought the Skagit River was gorgeous, it was just a prelude to Diablo Lake!

We drove around checking out the viewpoints, but we were also on a waitlist for a boat tour of the lake.

Unfortunately we didn’t get to go, but just spending the day near the lake was awesome.

We noticed as we drove that there was smoke on a nearby hillside. We thought it was the Easy fire, but it turns out that lightning had started yet another fire the night before.

We spent some time watching the planes and helicopters work the fire.

The planes kept flying around in a circular pattern around the blaze, and we heard later that they were measuring the size of the fire and mapping it.

Our serious hike in this area was Sauk Mountain Trail. The road getting there was interesting on it’s own- very slow going up a bunch of switchbacks- coincidently, that’s exactly what the trail was like- a bunch of switchbacks.

When a hiker sees a trail that looks like this, you know you are gaining elevation at a rapid pace- which is exactly what I had to do- pace myself.

There was no shortage of things to look at and keep our interest, so it wasn’t too hard.

At the top there was some (not much) bouldering involved. I kinda like that though.

In the end we did about ( I accidently shut off my tracker) 4.5 miles and 1300 ft of gain.