We woke up in Coeur D’Alene, ID to beautiful weather. One thing we have been pretty lucky with on our vacation is the weather. I think that also has to do with the west coast and the fact that the weather always seems more temperate out here. Our plans are to head to the Northern Cascades National Park in Washington. This will be our 9th state of our journey together.

The drive to the North Cascades was definitely interesting. We went through the weirdest part of Washington- who knew the eastern side was a desert??? There were a few dammed up rivers that created some lakes- Roosevelt and Chief Joseph dams were a couple we saw. Due to these dams, there are TONS of apple and cherry orchards surrounding us. We passed through Twisp, WA (cool name!) where Scott got a little frustrated at the locals- a man driving 20 miles under the speed limit, with his blinker on; turned his blinker off, then used his arm to signal a turn at the last second! I just had to laugh. Winthrop, WA was also a cool little town that was set back to it’s original mining town looks.

 

Our drive continued through Ross Lake area and Diablo Lake. Something interesting about the North Cascades National Park is that Ross Lake National Recreation Area splits the northern and southern units in half. This is due to the fact that there are several hydroelectric plants along the river, which have been there since before the area was designated as a national park. These types of activities are not permitted in national parks, therefore the area was designated as a national recreation area so to continue their work.

Diablo Lake was absolutely gorgeous. We drove to this overlook and the water is just ridiculously pretty. We also saw Colonial Peak at this overlook, which has a glacier on it!

 

Our campground was inside the national park, and it was crazy because there was almost nobody there in the campground! We only saw a couple people on our way out of the campground.

 

We drove to the visitor center nearby, and did the River Loop trail which took us, naturally, by the river. It was a nice little trail. We then went in search of the National Park sign, which we did find along the main road through the park. Like I said earlier, this main road isn’t actually in the national park, so it felt a little lame. We read in Scott’s national parks book that there was a road that was the only road into the national park. It was 23 miles long, the first 10 paved, the last 13 being “primitive” aka no markings, almost down to one lane, gravel and dirt…you get the picture. We decided to try it out, as the book said it was worth it! We made it all the way to the entrance sign for the park, and then decided we may as well take it all the way up! We weren’t disappointed! Scott says it better than I, but usually to get the kind of views we got, you have to do the hiking to get up the mountain. We had wanted to do the Cascade Pass trail, but didn’t have enough time to make it up and down before nightfall. This hike is now on our list of To-Dos next time we visit!

Here are some photos of Northern Cascades National Park! Definitely worth a visit but you have to make effort to get into the park, and should probably want to hike quite a bit!