9/7/12 -- High Desert and More Mountains

Our first stop after leaving lovely Starvation Lake near Colville was Republic WA.  The last time we were in Republic, it was a good place to be from.  It was depressed and kind of ugly. 

What a change since then.  Someone who lives there has lit a fiery torch of civic pride.  Every building in their very hilly little downtown is decorated in a western theme.  Even the grocery story had large letters that looked like they came from an old western movie.  The hotel was particularly cute.

The picture isn't tilted -- the whole town is on a hill!

All day long we drove through tree-topped mountains, high passes dotted with constructions crews and flaggers.  That night we stayed at Curlew Lake State Park.  We were shocked at the prices -- $31/night.  It was groomed to an inch of its life and looked like somebody’s back yard park.  It was beautiful, I guess, and the lake was pretty but not our favorite kind of camping.  We weren’t tempted to stay longer.

The next day we turned south and drove along the Cascade Mountains, still in central WA.  We wandered through brown, well, either they are mountains as I claim or they are very large hills, as Adina claims.  She’s probably right as she grew up in central WA and knows the high desert as only a native can know.  All I know is that they are beautiful to me.  Some people would call them barren as they have few trees on them, but I grew to love them when I lived here and I love them still.  This is high desert bounded by ranges of granite mountains laced with lava that filtered into fissures in the rock.

Eastern WA hills

These hills are gentle during the heat of the sun but in early morning and late afternoon, their ridges and ripples stand out as if they were painted with an artist’s brush.  The brown of the hills is like the velvet on a young buck’s antlers.  Because there aren’t so many trees, each tree takes on great significance and stands out in sharp relief.

 One surprise was that the sagebrush was blooming.  Adina didn’t remember them blooming, although we suppose they always did.  They bloom with a delicate yellow flower. 

Blooming Sagebrush

We stopped in a driveway to take the picture above and a young woman with two dogs came out to see what was going on.  Adina told her our story and she said she wanted to see if we needed help.  Then she told us “Welcome home.”  So many people have said that to us, in grocery stores, gas stations and campgrounds.

Many of you know sage only as something that McCormick bottles along with its garlic, cinnamon and onion powder.  Our campground in Yellowstone was ringed with sagebrush.  Here’s the true size of WA sagebrush – it’s taller than Adina!    

We drove through the familiar towns of Tonaskat, Omak and Okanagan.  As we drove along the Okanagan River, we watched the irrigation systems come on that water the fruit groves.  Many of the Delicious Apples that show up in WI grocery stores come from the Okanagan Valley.  We stopped at a fruit stand and bought pears, nectarines and plums, right out of the field.  What a treat!

We have been wanting to drive the North Cross mountain highway (Hwy 20) across the Cascade Mountains, the last range of mountains we have to cross, but have been having second thoughts, third thoughts and more.  If we went that way, we’d be camping 1-2 nights at over 5000 ft.  September has arrived and nights have been getting plenty cold at 3-4000 ft.  Also, it is the highest pass over the Cascades in WA so we’d spend a lot of gas going that way.

We decided to save that trip for another day, preferably a summer one.  We’ve going to cross the Cascade Mountains on Hwy 2.  That route holds a lot of favorite places for us to re-visit and it isn’t such a high pass.

Before we started up the pass, we decided to stop for a couple of days at Lake Chelan.  It is said to be one of the most beautiful places in the state.  We have so many favorite places that we aren’t sure if that’s true, but it is certainly one of the most beautiful.  The picture below also shows another view of these beautiful eastern WA hills.  Er, mountains. Uh, hills.


The View from the Dock

Lake Chelan is 55 miles long and as much as 1500 ft deep.  Some of the lake lies below sea level.  The depth gives it a rich blue color as it reflects the sunny skies of eastern WA.  The next picture shows the Cascade Mountains in the distance, our next range of mountains to cross.  Those mountains are very rugged. 
 


Lake Chelan with the Cascade Mountains in the distance

Lake Chelan draws its water from glaciers in the Cascades so the water is pretty cold, as Adina found when she went swimming.  Briefly.  She got in chest deep and could hardly breathe for the cold but managed to make it back to the bank.



A Really COLD Swimming Experience

We camped on a little stream that fed into the lake.  Campers were asked to stay off the gravel beds of the stream because it is a spawning home for salmon.  We enjoyed the stream’s music as it tumbled over rocks and down one long little cascade.  The sound calmed and renewed us during the day and lulled us to sleep at night. 


Our Very Own Mountain Stream

Listening to the stream, I wrote a poem about streams I have known.  Each of them is special in its own way.

some streams slide
across a gentle land
whisper secret wisdom
to swaying willow branches

some streams meander
across marshy meadows
like a sleepy snake
green scales glistening

some streams tumble
bumping down mountainsides
falling over mossy rocks
singing a symphony

 I have been remiss.  Introductions are in order. 

 You all enjoyed meeting Winston who traveled with us and Drichab Anna as far as Yellowstone.  We have also had another traveling companion who sends special greetings to Winston.  Her name is Percy the Prayer Plant. 



Greetings from Percy the Prayer Plant!

 She is the only one of our plants that is moving to Vancouver with us.  Percy is our favorite plant.  She lives in a pot that my mother tiled so her home is special to us too.  She even has a job.  Prayer plants are good at cleaning the air and keeping it fresh and pure.  Do we ever have a fresh and pure car!  She also graces our table at every campsite.

 She has weathered the trip pretty well considering that she has always been an inside plant.  She enjoys sitting on the picnic table and prefers to bask in shade rather than sun.  At Starvation Lake, she spent her days waving at the lily pads.  They all waved back.  She misses Winston, though.

 Our second night at Lake Chelan, Adina cooked a stew.  Then we sat by the fire and watched the moon throw shadows of light across our camp.  High in the trees above us, birds (and maybe bats) darted about, inspiring this Haiku:

tree scrapes night’s black sky

moonlit birds circle its crown

just like butterflies

 Today (Friday, 9/7), we rode past fifty miles of apple groves.  Those gorgeous apples looked so good on the tree that we stopped at a fruit stand and got some.  They were good in the eating too.  We also picked up some really delicious apple butter.

 

 

The woman at the counter was proud that they finally had honey for sale.  The owner said that they hadn’t been able to get any for a while because the bears in the mountains kept destroying the hives and it was too expensive for the beekeepers to replace them. 

 

We’ll get honey when we get home to Vancouver.  Bees that are local to an area provide antibodies in their honey to the regions local ills.  That fruit stand owner sure had some rich, thick honey, though, and we were tempted.

Tonight I write the last paragraphs of this blog from the skirts of the Cascade Mountains.  We are camped at a campground in the Wenatchee National Forest.  I sit in camp surrounded by towering Ponderosa pines, their red bark burnished by the sunshine.  The bubbling creek across the road is providing healthy air and the sound of rushing water that we find so relaxing.

 Tomorrow, we’ll visit Leavenworth WA, and wait until I tell you about that – in the next blog!  It’s a very special, very unusual town!

We’ll stay here until Monday, and will go sightseeing in the area.  We’ll leave Monday or so and ride Hwy 2 across Steven’s Pass.  Follow our adventures on any Washington map.

Are we there yet???  

 

Several of you have asked if we aren’t almost home now.  For those of you who have wondered how far from Vancouver we are, we are 276 miles.  I suppose that, if we drove hard, we could be home in a few days, even considering the Cascade Mountains and having to fight Seattle traffic. 

 

We’re not doing that. 

This is such a wonderful opportunity for exploring all the faces of this beautiful state and we are taking full advantage of it.  We don’t have to be in Vancouver until the first week of October – or so.  We’re having an awful lot of fun being vagabonds.  Wish it could go on forever, except that, even in WA, winter will come.  There will be plenty of time, then, to unpack that mountain of boxes that wait for us in Vancouver. 

Meanwhile, come vagabond with us!