Vacation Day 2; North Cascades National Park

The day prior to leaving for our trip, there was a huge rock slide that caused a major roadway into North Cascades National Park to be closed.  The road was completely washed away and it looked like we were going to need to scrap our North Cascades day.  After asking a state ranger the prior night at Wallace Falls State Park we opted to see if we could scavenge at least an afternoon in the National Park.

As the sun rose on the tent that protected Ashley and I from a late night rain, we both awoke, packed up and decided to head to a little town about an hour away that had a visitor / information center for North Cascades.  Before we set off though, we headed back into the woods to pick our breakfast.  The night prior, we noticed about a quarter of a mile of blackberry bushes just off the trail.  We filled our mouths with fresh, wild blackberries (and dropped some in a bag for later) as our morning meal.

Once at the information center, we were told that we could get into the park but not all the way in.  Ashley and I decided to cobble together a makeshift day in the park and make the best of it before heading further north to camp.  While en-route to the park we stumbled upon the Cascadian Farms u-pick and store front on the side of the road.  Knowing the brand, we stopped and were pretty excited.  We did not have time to u-pink the fresh organic berries but we did buy a small amount in the store.  It was like a second breakfast for us and the blueberries were amazingly sweet and tender.

By the time we arrived in the park, the rain was coming down in a heavy misting and it was pretty overcast.  There were still some amazing sights in this mountain range and I wish we had the opportunity to have planned the day better but it was still a great park to visit.  We got in a few hikes, saw some great waterfalls, a strange beach-like place where all the trees had fallen, and some awesome overlooks.  The water was a teal color that we had never witnessed before.  It was pretty amazing.

On our way out of the park, we saw a gang of elk just eating in a field.  There were so many, it was impressive.  We had some dinner at a mildly sketchy thai food place, gassed up and headed north.

We ended our day in Douglas Fir campground in the Mt Baker area.  It was the only campsite where we would spend two nights and fortunately, it was the best campground we were in.  There was even a nice hike just off the campground that we took that evening after setting up.  We saw salmon swimming upstream which was pretty cool.