The Cascades

We had come this way west through the Cascades back in 2003 on our way back from a trip to Banff and Jasper, but for some reason we didn't remember it being so spectacular.  The mountains are rugged, sharp, and forbidding with a lot of snow for good measure.  The road is winding, somewhat narrow, and it is especially hard for the driver to stay on course with such sensational scenery around every corner.  

Climbing up towards Washington Pass

We remembered we had stopped somewhere along the way to take a short walk to a viewpoint and were hoping to find it once again.  We did.

Jan at the viewpoint

Beautiful!

Me standing on the edge of the cliff, yeah right...

We had a nice lunch stop along the way, and just took our time, pulling off every so often to let the traffic by on our way to Rockport, WA.

Awesome

We continued to an overlook above Diablo Lake, a part of the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project.

The color is from glacial silt

We made our way down and got another couple glimpses of the snow icing the mountains.

Pretty

We pulled into a really nice campground at the Howard Miller Steelhead Park.  It was very well done, and even though we did not have sewer, it was peaceful, quiet, lots of privacy, and arranged in a way that we had never seen, in circles, very inventive.  Check out the map in the brochure.  There were 10 sites in the circle, fanned out, easy to get into and out of, and afforded more privacy than the normal side by side sites.

The view from our site, #40

We even managed to get in another couple days fishing, no we still haven't caught anything:(

Our fishing stream