This place is soooo green, it almost hurts! So many types and colors of trees, and ferns everywhere. And you know why it is so green- so much drizzly rain. Every day. We got a few moments of sunshine, but mostly gray skies and pouring rain or just mist. Apparently, you are supposed to come to the Pacific Northwest AFTER the Fourth of July to see sunshine on a regular basis. Late June is just a tad too early! Being inside the RV we stay warm and dry, but it makes hiking tough. The trails here are pretty rocky and when they are wet, slippery. We did get a few steep hikes in, and it is amazingly beautiful around here, but we saw almost no animals. Not even many birds. We laugh because everywhere we went in the southwest and midwest, there are doves. EVERYWHERE! This trip, everywhere we go we see American Robins. The color morph around here is a darker red brown vs. our very bright red breasted variety.
We ended up leaving Farragut State Park a day early – without a boat, it was limited what we could do. And that way, we also missed trying to get through Spokane during morning traffic. So, Sunday afternoon, we headed for Wilbur, Wa. What an adorable town. All along Highway 2 you see all these sort of depressed older towns, out among cattle and wheat fields. Dave’s grandparents left the area between Reardon and Davenport early in their marriage to immigrate to Spokane – what a different life Denny, Dave and Mike would have had, if Myron and Lavawn had not left! But then you get to Wilbur and it is a vibrant older town. People seem to have decided to keep it going. We stayed at a mobile home park that had just a few open sites for us travelers. They were kind. The town is not any wealthier I think than the others but people were keeping some of the stores and diners open. They are along Roosevelt Lake and there was a lot of construction so that may have helped. It was a good respite on our way to Newhalem.
We also stopped at Grand Coulee Dam on our way from Wilbur to North Cascades. That is extremely impressive. It is always amazing to see what can be done, and was done, during the depression as part of getting people jobs. 77 men died during the building of the dam. It is one of the largest concrete structures in the world. There are 3 power generating sections and the last one, finished in 1980, provides about 60% of the overall power converted in the dam. I liked how there was some effort at least, to make the dam work for the local people since the original plan was to flood the coulee all the way to Canada. Irrigation was the first idea behind the building of the dam, so more land could be used to provide food during the war. Upstream from the dam, as we traveled to North Cascades, there was a lot of irrigated farmland, especially in the Colville reservation. That area seemed much more prosperous than most of the other areas in this part of the state. of course, later in WWII the power generated by the dam helped the aluminum and airplane industries even more. But on to Newhalem!
The campground here was nice, with sites separated by a good amount of lush growth. The walk in sites where amazing – some were along the Skagit River, close to the shore. It was a little bit of a hike to get there, but probably well worth it to those there. We got to see it when we did the Know your Tree trail. That was also kind of fun. There are different trees than we have at home. This NP, like many of the others, is a lot of driving to get to hikes and different views. We had never been here before. Several of the rivers and lakes are glacier fed and have the turquoise coloration of the minerals. Which also means, fewer fish and other animals. The mineral silt plugs up fish gills. But there were other snow melt creeks and rivers so we did see a fair amount of fish. But again, because it was gray and gloomy, we didn’t get to hike as much as planned. Luckily, the mornings were decently nice so we could get up to hike, and then hunker down during the afternoon rain and play games. We felt bad though, for those in tents, because the rain came down very hard at times and everything was soaked through! Also, because Newhalem also makes electricity, all throughout the forest there are large electrical power lines. Not as pretty as it could be, but still very beautiful.
One of the days we went to Anacortes and took a Whale Watching boat out into the Salish Sea. It is the same company we used out of Orcas Island several years ago (Outer Island Excursions). What a blast although, yes I got a bit seasick yet again. I used the Seabands and took ginger pills but phew – DID NOT feed the fish but it was close. I do well until we stop and bob around. We saw fairly close up a sea otter wrapped up in kelp, Steller sea lions, A Pod orcas (with 2 adorable calves!!) and a Humpback. As before, the crew of the boat is very good and they have quite the network of finding the pods of orcas. And this case, the humpback. It was also fun for us to see Lucas and Orcas Islands again, as well as San Juan Island! Brought back some awesome family trip memories.
The last fun thing we did on this trip was travel to Darlington, Wa and meet up with Micki and Glenn for lunch at a local brewery. Quite delish pizza for sure. It was just about halfway between Newhalem and Snohomish!
