Friday, September 1, 2023
Today was another beautiful, sunny day. The temperature started out at 57 degrees and soon reached 72 degrees.
We left the Swinomish Casino RV Park around 10:45 a.m. and headed to Burlington, Washington to the Friday Creek Campground.
We followed I-5 East toward Burlington, Washington.
Then we followed I-5 North and soon we were close to Burlington, Washington.
Burlington is a city in Skagit County, Washington with a population of 9,152. Burlington is located approximately halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia. The city is included in the Mount Vernon–Anacortes, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area. Burlington began as a logging camp, established by John P. Millett and William McKay, in 1882. It was officially incorporated on June 16, 1902.
We then continued north for approximately 1 mile to Friday Creek Road. We then turned left onto Friday Creek Road.
We continued north on Friday Creek Road for approximately 1 mile. We then saw Friday Creek Campground on the left.
Friday Creek Campground is a quaint little campground with 27 wooded sites along "Friday Creek". It is a great place to get away from it all and its close to the Skagit Speedway and the Skagit Casino.
We got set up on site #16 for three nights. As this campground is part of the Thousand Trails Campgrounds, it didn't cost us anything. What an ideal small and quiet campground in the woods.
Shown above is the Friday Creek at the Friday Creek Campground in Burlington, Washington.
After getting all set up, we decided to drive back into town.
We drove by Mount Vernon, Washington. Mount Vernon is the county seat of Skagit County, Washington with a population of 35,219. Downtown Mount Vernon is known for its annual Tulip Festival Street Fair, which is part of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The climate of Skagit County is similar to that of Northern France, with millions of tulips grown in the Skagit Valley.
In 1870, Jasper Gates and Joseph Dwelley first settled on the banks of the Skagit River, where the city of Mount Vernon now lies. Later on, Harrison Clothier came to the community in 1877 to teach school and join in business with a former student, E.G. English. They were later recognized as the city's founders and pioneer businessmen. A post office was established in November 1877 with Clothier appointed postmaster. The city was named after Mount Vernon -- the plantation estate and resting place of George Washington. The two men laid out the city's first plan while the area was still heavily timbered.
(Mount Vernon, Washington in 1880.)
Mount Vernon's first industry was logging and camps were set up to log the townsite. The community grew quickly following the loggers, and hotels and saloons opened up along the Skagit River next to English and Clothiers' store. While poised to grow, river access to the community was stymied by a massive and ancient log jam in the river which prevented large ships from being able to port. Mail carriers instead had to paddle canoes down-stream to nearby Skagit City which enjoyed a brief period of prosperity thanks to this obstacle. The mining activity at nearby Ruby Creek spurred growth for a short time in 1880, gaining the city a new hotel, but little else was accomplished when the mines proved to be shallow. More logging operations were established but were not profitable due to the low price of logs at the time. By 1881, Mount Vernon's permanent population was a modest 75.
Growth in the 1880s was steady. In 1882, the Odd Fellows Lodge was established, followed by the first newspaper in 1884 -- The Skagit News. The first church (Baptist), was also established in 1884 but would not build a permanent building for several years. In November 1884, Mount Vernon's future was secured when it was chosen for the new Skagit County seat, taking the designation from La Conner. The Odd fellows building, built the following year, served the county's needs until a permanent building was built.
Once we were back at Burlington, we stopped at Camping World to get a few camping supplies (a propane regulator, two expandable laundry baskets and four matching shopping bags). We then went to Taco Bell in Burlington for lunch and each had a craving box.
After that, we continued on to Bow, Washington. Bow is an unincorporated community in Skagit County, Washington. It is located near the towns of Bay View, Edison, Burlington, and Mount Vernon. Bow overlooks Samish Bay and has a population of 203. Bow was originally known as Brownsville, after William J. Brown, who homesteaded the townsite in 1869. The advent of the railroad resulted in a population boom and the need for a post office. Apparently inspired by the growth brought by the railroad, Brown suggested the new name of Bow, after the large railway station in London, England, which in turn was named for the bow or poplar tree.
Our next stop was at the Skagit Casino in Bow, Washington. The Skagit Casino boasts hundreds of slot machines, an on-site hotel, a variety of restaurants and all-star entertainment.
We went inside the Skagit Casino and we each got signed up for a new player card. The new player card provided us each with $20 in free slot play and a $5 food voucher.
It didn't take long for each of us to lose the $20 in free play, but we knew that happy hour started at 3 p.m. Since happy hour offered $4 well drinks and $5 beers, I decided to have a couple of well drinks, while Mel had a few beers.
Since we didn't plan to come back later, and our $5 food vouchers were only good today, we decided to eat at the Tacos & Tequila inside the casino.
We each ordered taco salads -- Mel has sirloin steak on his, while I had chicken on mine (see picture above). Besides the meat, the taco salads also had black beans, romaine lettuce, jalapeños, radish slices, diced onions, back olives, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream dressing, and avocado slices (hold the olives, and avacodo slices on mine however). And all for $14.99 each, minus both of our $5 food vouchers. Not too bad and the taco salads were ginormous and were very tasty!
After we left the casino, we decided to drive over to the Mount Vernon Thousand Trails and check it out. Its snow-capped mountains and scenic rivers offer a stunning backdrop for this RV camp in Washington State.
We drove into the campground and looked around at the pool area and wanted to see whether or not they had a pickleball court.
We also got a glimpse of Mt. Baker from the campground (see below).
We got back to our camper at about 6:30 p.m. and settled in for the night. But come bedtime, we were amazed at how loud the sound from the Skagit Raceway could be heard at the campground.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE WORLD OF OUTLAWS -- founded in 1978, the World of Outlaws is based in Concord, North Carolina and is the premier national touring series for dirt track racing in North America, featuring the most powerful cars on dirt, the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series. The Sprint Car Series is the premier winged sprint car series in the world, featuring the most world class drivers. The World of Outlaws tour invades racetracks and thrills fans in more than 23 different states while sanctioning events at some of the most famous dirt racing facilities in the world.
When the sprint cars were racing, it sounded like a whirlwind or the sound of wind driving snow during a blizzard and this screeching sound went on and on until I eventually fell asleep.
Saturday, September 2, 2023
After a pancake breakfast, we left at 8:45 a.m. to drive to Burlington, Washington. It was a sunny day with a temperature of 65 degrees, which would reach 80 degrees in the afternoon.
We did two loads of laundry at a laundromat in Burlington, Washington. And then headed back to the camper to spend the afternoon at Friday Creek Campground relaxing. Tonight we had pizza for dinner.
Sunday, September 3, 2023
Today started out sunny and 63 degrees, but would turn to cloudy and rainy even though the temperature reached 77 degrees.
We decided to go for a drive to check out the Grandy Creek Thousand Trails & KOA at Concrete, Washington, and then drive through the North Cascades National Park.
We took exit 232 Cook Road toward Sedro-Woolley.
Along the way we saw fields of brussels sprouts. Mel loves brussels sprouts and has found a couple of ways to fix them in the air fryer, but I don't like them at all.
Brussels Sprouts are a very hardy plant, with a really strong stalk, so they can take the strong Washington weather and be harvested fresh for awhile. They start planting them in April, and from January into mid-February, they are still harvesting the miniature trees.
The edible sprouts grow like buds in a spiral array on the side of long thick stalks of approximately 2 to 4 feet in height, maturing over several weeks from the lower to the upper part of the stalk.
Workers cut the Brussels Sprouts stalks by hand and fed them into specialized harvesters from the Netherlands, which remove the leaves and sprouts, feeding the sprouts into a hopper. The sprouts were then loaded into 13-ton trucks and taken to a large cooling and operations center in Burlington. Skagit Valley Farm is now the biggest Brussels sprouts producer in the state.
We then drove along the Cascade Loop Scenic Highway. The Cascade Loop National Scenic Byway is known as a "440-mile love letter to Washington State", praising her natural beauty and charisma.
History-rich Sedro-Woolley is named for two towns with logging and railroad origins that were combined in 1898. As the home of the North Cascades National Park headquarters office and the gateway to the North Cascades, Sedro-Woolley prides itself in providing great outdoor recreation as well as dining options for travelers through the region.
Sedro-Woolley is a city in Skagit County, Washington with a population of 12,421. The city is home to North Cascades National Park. Incorporated on December 19, 1898, Sedro-Woolley was formed from neighboring rival towns of Sedro (once known as Bug) and Woolley in Skagit County, northwestern Washington, 25 miles inland from the Puget Sound, 40 miles south of the border with Canada and 65 miles north of Seattle.
Four British bachelors, led by David Batey, homesteaded the area in 1878, the time logjam obstructions were cleared downriver at the site of Mount Vernon. In 1884–1885, Batey built a store and home for the Mortimer Cook family from Santa Barbara, California where Cook had been mayor for two terms. Cook intended to name his new Pacific Northwest town Bug due to the number of mosquitos present, but his wife protested along with a handful of other local wives. Cook was already the namesake for the town Cook's Ferry on the Thompson River in British Columbia. With "Bug" being so unpopular, Cook derived a town name from Spanish, knowing "cedro" was the word for cedar, he replaced one letter to make the name unique, settling on "Sedro".
Sedro, on the northern banks of the Skagit River, proved susceptible to floods. In 1889, Northern Pacific Railway developer Nelson Bennett began laying track from the town of Fairhaven, 25 miles northwest on Bellingham Bay, and real estate developer Norman R. Kelley platted a new town of Sedro on high ground a mile northwest of Cook's site. The Fairhaven and Southern (F&S) Railroad arrived in Sedro on Christmas Eve 1889, in time for Bennett to receive a performance bonus from the towns at both ends, and a month after Washington became the 42nd state in the Union.
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(Sedro-Woolley in 1906.)
Within months, two more railroads crossed the F&S roadbed a half mile north of new Sedro, forming a triangle where 11 trains eventually arrived daily. Railroad developer Philip A. Woolley moved his family from Elgin, Illinois, to Sedro in December 1899 and bought land around the triangle. He built the Skagit River Lumber & Shingle Mill next to where the railroads crossed and he started his namesake company town there that was based on sales of railroad ties to the three rail companies, including the Seattle and Northern Railway and the Northern Pacific Railroad.
Meanwhile, a fourth town rose nearby when the F&S laid rails on a "wye" that led northeast from Sedro about four and a half miles to coal mines. Bennett bought the mines, along with Montana mining financier Charles X. Larrabee, and they soon sold their interests to James J. Hill, owner of the Great Northern. The resulting ore soon turned out to be more suitable for coking coal (with a higher carbon content than steam coal, as well as a lower level of sulphur, phosphorous and alkalis) and a town began there named Cokedale. Cokedale faded in importance when the mine declined and the other towns all merged on December 19, 1898, as Sedro-Woolley.
On May 15, 1922, a large circus elephant known as Tusko (presumably because of his 7-foot-long tusks) escaped from the Al G. Barnes Circus, which was making one of its stops in Sedro-Woolley, at that time. The elephant stomped his way through the little logging town and into local history, demolishing fences, knocking over laundry lines and trees, telephone poles, and a Model T.
(Tusko when he was with the Al G. Barnes Circus (c. 1922)
(An ad for Tusko at the Al G. Barnes Circus, ca. 1922.)
After logging and coal-mining declined, the major employers and industries became the nearby Northern State Hospital and Skagit Steel & Iron Works, which rose from the back room of a local hardware store to become a major supplier of implements and parts for logging and railroad customers. The firm manufactured machines and parts for the war effort in World War II and artillery shells, starting in 1953. By 1990, the company was gone and the hospital was closed but new industry, including robotics and aerospace, is developing north of town and on the campus of the old hospital.
Concrete Washington is now 24 miles away.
We then drove through Hamilton, Washington. Hamilton is a town in Skagit County, Washington with a population of 299. Hamilton was first settled in 1877 by William Hamilton, and was later named for him when Hamilton was officially incorporated on March 19, 1891. The town was flooded by the Skagit River in November 2021. The local post office was deemed uninhabitable due to damage from the floods and shut down despite repairs to the building. Mail and parcels bound for Hamilton are instead forwarded to the Concrete post office, located 13 miles away.
We were soon at the turnoff for the Grandy Creek Thousand Trails & KOA RV park.
Located at the base of Mount Baker, Grandy Creek RV Campground offers a gorgeous natural setting just a short distance from North Cascades National Park.
Since there was no person in the guard shack, we decided not to hang around just to drive in for a look.
We were soon at the town of Concrete, Washington.
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Once the supply center for the product it is named for, Concrete’s silos held the ingredients used to make the Ross and Diablo Dams in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
Concrete is a town in north-central Skagit County, Washington with a population of 705. The town of Concrete has undergone several incarnations, the earliest being a settlement at the northwestern junction of the Baker and Skagit Rivers, known as "Minnehaha." Amasa "Peg-Leg" Everett was one of the earliest settlers and in 1890, the townsite was platted by another settler, Magnus Miller.
Shortly thereafter, a post office was established and the town name changed to "Baker." In 1905, a settlement across the Baker River came into being due to the building of the Washington Portland Cement Company and was named "Cement City." After the Superior Portland Cement Company plant was built in Baker in 1908, it was decided to merge the two towns. Inhabitants of the new community settled on the name "Concrete" and the town was so christened and officially incorporated on May 8, 1909.
We are now only 8 miles from Rockport, Washington.
We drove past Rockport and continued on to Marblemount, Washington.
Marblemount is a census-designated place in Skagit County, Washington with a population of 251 people. Present-day Marblemount was the site of an indigenous village when naturalist George Gibbs explored the region in 1858. A community of Euro-Americans arose in the 1870s to supply goods for miners along the Skagit and Cascade River drainages. A wagon road was built between Marblemount and Sauk in 1892.[
We are now entering the North Cascades National Park. "The North Cascades are Calling!" and we have answered. North Cascades National Park is a national park in the state of Washington with more than 500,000 acres. North Cascades National Park consists of a northern and southern section, bisected by the Skagit River that flows through the reservoirs of Ross Lake National Recreation Area. Lake Chelan National Recreation Area lies on the southern border of the south unit of the park. In addition to the two national recreation areas, other protected lands including several national forests and wilderness areas, as well as Canadian provincial parks in British Columbia, nearly surround the park.
North Cascades National Park features the rugged mountain peaks of the North Cascades Range, the most expansive glacial system in the contiguous United States, the headwaters of numerous waterways, and vast forests with the highest degree of flora biodiversity of any American national park.
(Shown above is the The Nlakaʼpamux , an Indigenous First Nations people of the Interior Salish language group in southern British Columbia. Their traditional territory includes parts of the North Cascades region of Washington.)
Historians believe that the region now part of North Cascades National Park dates back to the end of the last glacial period and the region has been continuously inhabited for the last 8-10,000 years. Ancestors of the Skagit Tribe fished, hunted and gathered resources in the North Cascades for thousands of years, and forged ancient travel and trade routes around the mountain peaks. The Skagits used Cascade Pass to connect to Stehekin, at the head of Lake Chelan, as a primary trade route with the people of the Columbia River Basin. Inland and residing to the north and east of the Skagits, the Nlaka'pamux (or Thompson Indians, named after explorer David Thompson), Chelan, Okanogan and Wenatchi tribes lived partly or year-round in the eastern sections of the North Cascades. The region was first settled by Paleo-Indian Native Americans and by the time European American explorers arrived, it was inhabited by Skagit tribes.
Gold was discovered in the North Cascades in the late 1800s, but many miners were disillusioned and instead began logging in the Skagit and Stehekin valleys. Many who stayed became shopkeepers and supported needs of trappers and prospectors. A base for miners was established at Marblemount.
By the early 19th century, the region was visited by fur trappers and several British and American companies vied for control over the fur trade. After the Canada–United States border was set at the 49th parallel in 1846, explorers came to chart potential routes through the mountains for roads and railroads. Limited mining and logging occurred from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.
By the 1900s, people began to recognize that the North Cascades’ rivers had tremendous potential for hydropower. Major hydroelectric development of the Skagit River began in 1918. A railroad eventually linked Newhalem and Diablo, company towns built for employees of the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project.
The first significant human impact in the region occurred in the 1920s when several dams were built in the Skagit River valley to generate hydroelectric power. And when environmentalists campaigned to preserve the remaining wilderness, on October 2, 1968 the park was designated as the North Cascades National Park (President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill). In 1972, the modern road was built to traverse the North Cascades.North Cascades National Park is almost entirely protected as wilderness, and so the park has few structures, roads or other improvements.
We followed the North Cascades Highway (WA Hwy 20) for about 30 miles across the park and experienced the old growth forests, cascading waterfalls, and mountain scenery of North Cascades.
We turned East following WA Hwy 20 toward Newhalem.
Newhalem is now 14 miles away, while Diablo is 22 miles away.
North Cascades National Park entrance sign is shown above. North Cascades National Park has epic viewpoints such as Ross Lake Overlook and Diablo Lake Overlook.
The Ross Lake Overlook is situated along the picturesque North Cascades Highway, and gives visitors a beautiful glimpse of the majesty that is the North Cascades. The overlook itself is located at mile 136 just past the turnout for the Happy Creek Nature Trail. From this viewpoint you can see the southernmost end of Ross Lake which winds its way toward Canada in the distance.
The Diablo Lake Vista Point and Overlook has views that are sublime as you can pull right up to the viewpoint with your car and look out upon the breathtakingly turquoise Diablo Lake below.
Next we continued our drive on to the North Cascades National Park Visitor Center.
We now entered Newhalem, Washington.
(Welcome sign at Newhalem, Washington.)
Newhalem is a small unincorporated community on the Skagit River in the western foothills of the North Cascades in Whatcom County of northwestern Washington.
(Above is Dana Currier, one of the key figures in the creation of Newhalem. He is posing in 1954 with the 2-6-2 locomotive built for Seattle City Light by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1928 and known as "Old Number Six".)
Newhalem is a company town owned by Seattle City Light and populated entirely by employees of the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project. The Ross Lake National Recreation Area surrounds Newhalem on all sides, and the North Cascades National Park boundary is approximately one mile to the north and south of the town. The name Newhalem has its roots in a local indigenous language as meaning 'Goat Snare', as the natives used to trap mountain goats in the area.
Above is the Thunderbird Totem Pole in Newhalem near the Seattle City Light Skagit Information Center in the North Cascades National Park in Washington. It states that the awesome Thunderbird of the Pacific Coast Indian mythology stands at the top of this totem pole carved from a Western Red Cedar log by a Washington Coast Indian craftsman in 1935. Thunder was said to be the beating of the bird's powerful wings, lightning the flashing of its eyes. Below the Thunderbird is the Bear. Ears on top of the head signify animals according to custom. The long straight beak identifies the Raven, subject of many Indian stories. Lowest on the totem pole is another bear.
We're now at the North Cascades National Park Visitor Center. Because of the recent fires, many of the areas within the park were closed.
At the visitor center, we watched two short films -- one on grizzly bears and the other on tree wolverines.
From the visitor center, we tried to set out on the River Loop Trail, which was a 1.8 mile loop trail, but there was a big tree over the trail at the beginning.
So now we are back on the North Cascades Highway.
We are now 6 miles from Diablo.
We to the first of two highway tunnels that lie between the towns of Newhalem and Diablo. The longest tunnel, closest to Newhalem, is fitted with a "BIKES IN TUNNEL" flashing light that can be turned on at either end.
Next we are at the Gorge Creek Overlook. We drive in and find a place to park.
At the Gorge Creek Overlook, we walked along a short, interpretive trail to an overlook taking in views of a waterfall, the gorge, and the dam. The trail skirted the rim of the gorge with views of free-flowing cascades and Gorge Dam. Througn windows in the forest, the power of water appreared in multiple guises: waterfalls of the Gorge Creek side canyon; deeply carved Skagit River gorge; impounded Gorge Lake; and on distant peaks the snowfields that fed the watershed. The same factors that created the dramatic wilderness scenery -- the steep terrain, and the force of falling water -- also made this gorge an ideal site for a hydroelectric dam
As we hiked, the Gorge Lake Overlook, we saw astonishing views of nature’s beauty as well as humanity's technological “improvements” upon it. The first section of this loop was paved, while the remaining graveled loop section wasn't too steep or challenging.
Terrain in the North Cascades is famously steep and rocky with cascading torrents of water. True to that form, this trail winds around a small knob of granite left behind after the last ice age. Deep down below its southern flanks, the Skagit River once coursed through this gorge.
The above storyboard told us about Falling Water. Here cacades and waterfalls are numerous, powerful, and often close at hand. The combination of climate and steep terrain intensifies the force of running water: these mountains are young and still rising, and storms off the nearby Pacific produce heavy precipitation. Even in their hot, dry months, waterfalls maintain their flow. Out of sight above the gorge, glaciers and snowfields feed the falls year-round.
We continued along the trail taking in all its beauty.
The above storyboard told us about Changing the Flow. When the dam turned this section of the Skagit River into Gorge Lake, it dramatically altered the life of the gorge. Most obviously, the rising waters drowned streamside habitat. Other impacts have been subtler: nutrient-rich sediments get trapped behind the dam instead of dispersed downstream to support life along the banks. By altering water temperatures and oxygen levels, the dam affects fish species and aquatic plants as well as the wildlife that depends on them.
Shown below is the Skagit River.
Since its completion in 1961, the Gorge Dam has been providing electricity to Seattle’s residents. This dam is just one of many that harnesses the waters of the Skagit. Collectively the lakes formed make up the Ross Lake National Recreation Area.
The above storyboard told us about the Chain of Dams. The first construction work to harness the Skagit River took place in 1924 in the gorge below. A low wood and rock spillway diverted water into a tunnel dug through the mountainside to a powerhouse in Newhalem. Bigger dams followed, culminating in the Gorge High Dam in 1961. Upstream there are larger dams and impounded lakes -- Diablo and Ross. George Dam, a key link in the hydropower system, fine-tunes the flows from those larger reservoirs.
The above storyboard told us about the Gorge High Dam. A strong dam depends not just on the concrete you see, but on the unseen structure beneath river level. During construction, engineers drilling to find bedrock encountered deep, unstable deposits of glacial till -- loose gravel and sand. Water kept seeping through and undermining diversion dams built to allow excavation. To solve the problem, the crews inserted a network of refrigeration tubes into the till and created a giant ice plug, freezing the gravel in place so that excavation could continue.
(Gorge Lake overlook with Pyramid Peak above.)
The above storyboard told us about the Transmission Lines. Transmission Lines are a visible link between these remote mountain lakes and densely populated urban areas. Gorge was the first of the Skagit power projects to go off line. On September 17, 1924, Pfresident Calvin Coolidge pressed a gold telegraph key in Washington, D.C. sending electricity from the Gorge Power House to Seattle -- along lines hung from wooden poles. Today high capacity lines hang from metal towers and criss-cross the mountain scenery. As falling water turns huge turbines in the Upper Skagit power plants, the electricity generated travels in power lines along a portion of the North Cascades Highway.
In the picture below, you can see high capacity electricity lines criss-crossing the mountain scenery.
After we were done with the trail, we walked back to look at Gorge Creek and cross the metal-grated bridge. The bridge has pedestrian walkways on both sides.
This bridge spans a side chasm, one of the many tributaries of the Skagit below. In the back of this chasm is a multi-tiered waterfall. The metal grated bridge decking is wonderfully vertigo-inducing as well as you can see below.
We walked across and got a view of the waterfall.
The great thing about walking on the bridge was that it provided the best view of the Gorge Creek Falls. This waterfall is located on the north side of the bridge. Water cascades 242 feet down the mountain before entering Gorge Lake, passing through the Gorge Powerhouse to the Skagit River. Water flows year-round, with the largest amount in spring and early summer during snow melt (see picture above).
We then continued on the North Cascades Highway and came to another tunnel, which much shorter than the first tunnel that we had gone through.
We passed the Gorge Lake Campground turnoff, continuing on WA Hwy 20 East.
We drove by Gorge Lake.
We drove by the turnoff to Pyramid Lake.
We also passed the turnoff for the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center.
We passed the Ross Dam Trail and Ross Lake Resort turnoff.
We continued along the North Cascades Scenic Highway.
Then we stopped for a picture at the Ross Lake National Recreation Area sign.
And then we crossed Panther Creek.
Above is a view of Diablo Lake from the highway.
We continued past Happy Creek Nature Trail.
We then drove by the Ross Dam Trail and Ross Lake Resort.
We crossed the bridge to the John Piercy Falls.
Then we came to the Diablo Lake Overlook.
Views of the beautiful Diablo Lake are shown above and below. We enjoyed the views of glacial-fed Diablo Lake, located within the heart of North Cascades. There was also rugged mountains rising around the lake with the historic Diablo Dam in the distance.
In the summer, the distinctive turquoise color of the lake is the result of suspended fine rock particles refracting sunlight. These rock particles, called glacial flour, enter the lake when rock from the surrounding mountains is eroded by ice and flows into the water through glacial streams. The color is most vibrant on sunny days in July, August, and September when seasonal glacial melt occurs.
At this point, we went just a little bit farther until we came to where we would soon be crossing over the border into Canada. We drove all the way out to the border of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. The Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest is a large and diverse landscape, encompassing 3.8 million acres along the east slopes of the Cascade Range in Washington.
At this point, we turned around and headed back the same we had come.
We finally got back to the shorter of the two tunnels, and we drove on through it.
We drove back by the Gorge Creek Overlook.
We drove through the second tunnel, which is the longer one.
We entered Newhalem again and saw all the lines from the power plant.
As we drove throgh Newhalem, Washington, we got another glimpse at the one landmark feature that you simply can't miss any more than the sheer rock cliffs that tower over it -- that is Old Number Six (see above), a Baldwin steam locomotive that played an important role in the construction of the Skagit Project. It operated on Seattle City Lights’ Skagit River Railway, which ran 23 miles from Rockport to Newhalem, and later extended to Diablo.
The railroad was under construction in 1920 and was built to carry construction materials, equipment, and workers to the towns, dams, and powerhouses. Starting in 1924, it also transported tourists visiting the area. By 1940, the U.S. Forest Service had developed a passable road to Newhalem, but travel to the area by passenger car was not common until after World War II when the road was improved as part of the state highway system. The locomotive operated until the railroad was removed in 1954.
Next we headed back to Marblemount. And then we came to a big limb from a tree that had fallen across our lane of the highway.
We're now back to Marblemount.
Continuing on, we are now at Concrete, and then on we went to Hamilton.
After we got back from the North Cascades National Park, we stopped at McDonald's for a late lunch, and then stopped at Fred Meyer for beer and groceries.
Tonight for dinner we had steaks and cauliflower salad. We had a marvelous day in the North Cascades National Park!
Shirley & Mel
Loved the Baldwin locomotive. The mountains are just beautiful. Surprised not more snow. What a great trip. This has been such a great trip. Curious how many miles you have traveled totally. Love the posts.
ReplyDeleteSome how on my second viewing of your posts I missed some? I love Brussel sprouts and how neat the gorge looks. I'm so glad I read twice like I. OrmLly do so I don't miss something. Amazing. I just love your blog. Thabks again and be safe. Reba.
ReplyDelete