North Cascades Highway National Park Washington – Thursday 15th – Thursday 22nd July 2010

We’re over the coast now and have gone back inland and are travelling across the North Cascades National Park Scenic Byway. Spectacular snow covered mountains with beautiful aqua blue lakes and brilliant waterfalls. This area has over 300 glaciers that have carved the landscape. Our first campsite along this route is a state park called Rasar which funnily enough is next door to a nudist camp. Now we think this is quite ridiculous that they pay to be in this club as we think they would have to pay us to take our clothes off, it’s way too cold.

Got this great photo of a butterfly at our campsite

As there is so much to see along this road we only went about 30 miles today before finding another good campground at Newhalem where we immediately became second best friends with the campground host and a few other couples who wanted to know the ins and outs of our adventure. They all seem to have trouble getting their head around the enormity of it all. They really don’t have great conditions here and usually only get 2 weeks a year holidays and that includes sick leave so we’d better stop complaining about our lot in Australia.

This is the view from our campsite on Diablo Lake, we set our chairs up on the bank for lunch and were still sitting there at happy hour time it was so beautiful

Took a hike up to the top of Thunder Knob for a fantastic view of the lake below

Found this cute little squirrel at the top of the mountain

Travelled on through some more massive mountains with beautiful views heading further eastward toward

Glacier National Park

Washington Pass on the North Cascades Highway

We travelled on a little further east and came across an old west town called Winthrop.  Had a walk along the street which still has boardwalks instead of concrete pathways and lots of cowboy type shops.  Came across an old hotel advertising homemade pies and of course we were straight in there as in the last few weeks we have been starting to get cravings for a good Aussie meat pie.  We haven't seen a pie since we've been here.  Anyway, we almost ran in there to buy a pie only to find that they are fruit pies, not quite what we had in mind.  Well, we went back to the RV and ate our healthy wrap yet again.

Winthrop

On a bit further and found a couple more good places to camp where we met the locals and had a really good time

                                                              Haag Cove Washington

                                                   Oh dear, happy hour again, thems the breaks

Yaak River Montana, we had a couple of swims here and met a nice couple (Linda and John from California) who we ended up having tea with and a few drinks of his home made wine (mmm very nice)