The Wonderfully Wooded World of Washington

Ryan and I have been ranking the places we’ve been based on how much we like the scenery, how many people there are, wildlife, etc. and we may have a new winner…

North Cascades National Park in the state of Washington, is the closest thing to Patagonia we’ve seen since our travels in South America. In a word – gorgeous. It’s so lushly green, the bark of the trees feels soft with moisture, and a fine cover of moss blankets most everything, even our picnic table. The temperature is perfect, with the right amount of humidity, so that we never felt too cold or too hot, even while hiking. Glacier rivers the color of Peridot drained into the main gorge, forming lakes lined with mossy trees. Waterfalls were everywhere among the thick foliage and spilling down cliff faces from hanging blue glaciers above. Yet for all the water there was, we didn’t deal with bugs hardly at all, mostly just slugs and squirrels. The woods hosted huge trees with trunks Ryan’s arm span couldn’t get halfway around, and tall enough to almost make you dizzy craning your head back for a look at the uppermost branches.

As soon as we arrived, and were lucky enough to snag a first-come-first-served site at Colonial Creek campground, Ryan and I couldn’t stop marveling at the park. It seems to be mostly locals who visit the park – the vast majority of plates we saw were Washington. After the crowds in Yellowstone, this certainly earned the park some bonus points.

We hiked to the North Cascades Pass yesterday and a bit up Sourdough Mountain (a 5,000ft gain in 5.1 miles felt oddly like we were hiking a 14er). We just could not stop gaping at the sights.

A flower possibly in the Columbine family.

Hello friend!

Foxglove grows wild here.

Right out of Patagonia

Heaven?

Another bonus is this place:

Que Car BBQ

Mom had showed me an article in Sunset magazine which talked about this BBQ place, and it’s not hard to mistake in the little town of Marblemont. Ryan and I decided to try it, even though it was a bit pricy, a pound of meat with sauce alone is $17, but my god there’s a reason why. We’ve never had better BBQ. No really. It absolutely melted in our mouths. I’m salivating just writing this. Ryan and I barely breathed we were so busy woofing our brisket sandwiches down, and afterwards, we debated delaying until lunch in the park the next day just so we could go back. You may be wondering how such an amazing BBQ place could exist in Washington? Well the owner is originally from Texas, where he’d been smoking meat for 28 years. Experience pays off clearly.

The only downside of the area, was that since everything was so green and alive and wet, making a fire for our celebratory s’mores proved to be basically impossible. We tried the egg-carton fire starters, paper towels, lots of kindling, and finally succumbed to “girl-scout water” (a little white gas for my backcountry stove). Nothing worked. The logs we’d bought (collection in the park is not allowed) were so wet, they hissed and steamed and bubbled water out their edges. After a couple hours we gave up.

One other interesting factoid, there must be a very hard nut the trees produce in the forest that the squirrels really love, but have a hard time cracking the shell to get to. How do I know this? At about 6:00 this morning, I started hearing WUMPS around the tent and forest. Every once in a while, there would be a CRACK from the direction of the picnic table. Suddenly, the WUMPS started edging closer to the tent until finally THUD! one landed right on the tent. It must not have cracked the nut though, because the squirrel chattered above and no more missiles landed on the tent, thankfully. Silly squirrels.

So in short, we have a new leader for our favorite national park. North Cascades National Park, you’ve captured our hearts. Now it’s just off to see how good the rest of Washington is. Stay tuned!