Retired and on the go: The Great North America Trip, Washington State: North Cascades, Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens; Sept 1

Below some pictures from two national parks and one national monument. First, North Cascades Nat. Park. We would have liked to stay longer and do more hikes, but the weather didn’t cooperate. Lots of rain. So we moved farther south, but still no luck with the weather.

This view of Thornton Lake (N. Cascades) is the reward after hiking up the trail for 800m to an altitude of 1540m. In and out, it took us 5.5 h

The power of the Skagit River which runs through the N. Cascades has been harnassed by constructing 3 consecutive dams. As a result, 3 lakes /reservoirs have been created. Below each dam, their is a power plant with large turbines to generate electricity. The city of Seattle depends on it. Here you see the lowest power plant: Gorge

And here is the dam upstream from Gorge

Next up is the Diablo dam; you can actually drive across it

A beautiful trail skirts the Diablo Lake

The third dam, going upstream, is Ross Dam, which you find at the end of the Diablo trail. Beyond the dam is Ross Lake

View from the Diablo trail

The dam system explained…..

While we had a few days of relatively nice weather, it started to rain; so we hiked the East Bank trail with our rain gear on. At the end, you have a view of Ross Lake.

As we were heading out of the N. Cascades, we stopped by the Washington pass overlook

Also by the western town of Winthrop with streets just as you see in Westerns (and very touristy)

Going south and overnighting by Walmart in Wenatchee where we stocked up on fresh supplies, we got to the next famous national park: Mount Rainier. Although it was early evening, the ranger advised us to drive right away to the highest point (Sunrise), in order to get a view of the mountain - which is almost 4400m high - before it would start raining. So we did. You can’t quite see the top but you get a good idea. Sunrise is at 1950m.

Indeed it rained the next morning. I had put up Noah’s Tarp as this contraption is called. It kept us dry while having breakfast at the picnic table.

We decided to move on because of the weather, thereby skipping some beautiful hikes. Before leaving Mount Rainier via the southwest route, we stopped at “Paradise” so called by a 19th century visitor who was very impressed with the beauty of the spot. A few more views of Rainier from Paradise……

And we stopped for some pictures of beautiful Narada Falls

Going to the far south of Washington State, close to the Oregon border, you find Mount St. Helens (now a national monument), the infamous volcano which erupted last in 1980 and reached havoc over a very large area. Its ashes rained down on people a 100 miles away and the explosion could be heard several 100s of miles from the mountain (the sound bouncing back from the layer of cold air high in the atmosphere. The ashes reached the high atmosphere, encircled the earth and caused the world’s temp. to drop by 1 or 2 degrees the next year. (Please google Mount St. Helens to verify these facts and learn more: www.visitMtStHelens.com).

There are several beautiful Visitors Centers along the road to the mountain. We visited all of them. They show movies of the eruption as well as photos of before and after. Fifty seven people died, which considering the enormity of the thing is a surprisingly low number. Huge mud avalanches raced through the river and valleys, destroying everything in their way.

Unfortunately, we could not see the top of the mountain which is actually not that high, about 2800m, because it was hidden in the clouds the whole time we were there.