Travels with rarecat: North Cascades

The North Cascades Scenic Highway (Hwy 20) was just a couple of hours drive from Mt. Baker and it didn't take us long to get to our first stop at the Newhalem Visitor Centre. There is a viewing deck behind the visitor centre with a splendid view of the Picket Range - perfect place for a picnic lunch. The visitor centre gave us a list of places to stop for views and we just followed along. The highway itself was a beautiful road to drive, hardly any traffic when we were there, and perfectly engineered so that you can go around curves comfortably at the prescribed speed without having to step on your brakes - what I would call a BMW kind of road (except we were driving a Hyundai Elantra)!

The star attraction on the main stretch of highway was Diablo Lake, with its turquoise colour typical of glacial lakes. There were lots of pullouts along the highway and very few cars so we were able to stop whenever we chose to. It was late afternoon by the time we arrived at the spectacular Washington Pass with its view of Liberty Bell. It was a good thing that we had planned to come back this way the following day as the massif was backlit and it was hard to get a good picture.

We spent the night in Winthrop, a small town dressed up like a western movie set. Quaint, but not much in town worth seeing and not much other than pub food in most restaurants. The two "fine dining" restaurants were closed on Mondays and Tuesdays so we ended up eating both nights at the Duck Brand, the only restaurant in town that is not a pub or a pizzeria. In the morning we drove back up Hwy 20 towards Washington Pass, stopped there for photos, this time in better light and then on to the trailhead a few miles away to begin our hike.

The Blue Lake Trail was one of the easiest trails in the National Park but we were slow and it took us two and a half hours just to hike the 2.5 miles. There was an elevation gain of 1000 ft. so there were a lot of switchbacks. It was a good thing there was a beautiful alpine meadow at the halfway point - it was good incentive to push on. People we met coming down from the top were very encouraging and of course the view of the peaceful blue lake encircled by mountains made it all worthwhile. There were views of Liberty Bell from different perspectives, at the top and also coming down.

The following day we drove south on the way to Mt. Rainier but took a detour to drive part of the south loop of the scenic highway to Leavenworth - dressed up as a Bavarian town. We had our picnic by the river before heading into town for ice cream and a taste of Bavaria - as expected, it was not quite the experience we had when we were actually in Bavaria earlier this year.

Practical tips:
1. It is true, it is better to drive the North Cascades Scenic Highway from east to west. The mountain views approaching the Washington Pass from the east were quite breathtaking and I had to pull out several times to take photos. Driving east from the Washington Pass the first day, we missed those views.
2. Plan to stop at Washington Pass for photos in the early morning rather than in the late afternoon. The sun is on Liberty Bell in the morning while it is backlit in the later afternoon.