North Cascades National Park

After leaving our tour group on the west side of Glacier NP in Montana, we headed back into Canada to sample wines around the town of Kelowna, British Columbia.

The body of water in the picture above is Lake Okanagan, which is 84 miles long, up to 3 miles wide and is over 750 ft deep at its deepest point!

As we drove south into Washington state…

… the vineyards continued, but the surrounding land became much more arid -

The morning we set off for a hike to Blue Lake, we were greeted by a sentinel along the road -

As we drove closer to the park, evergeens started making an appearance…

… and the land rose appreciably -

That is Liberty Bell Mountain…

… and it formed the backdrop for our hike -

So, on to the hike. We ascended through lush forest…

… and a wildflower filled meadow…

… catching glimpses of more of the Cascade Range across a valley…

… before reaching Blue Lake -

As we passed around to the other side of the lake, we could see the back side of Liberty Mountain -

For those who are keeping track, this was a fairly short hike for us at 5.2 miles roundtrip with 1,000 ft of elevation gain.

Our original plan to explore North Cascades NP was to drive through it on US 20, a distance of about 85 miles. Forest fires closed a section of it, so we did the hike to Blue Lake (on the east side of the park) and then the next day had to drive 5 1/2 hours in a detour around and south of the park to reach the west side. This turned out to be a very scenic drive…

… along the Columbia River…

… and then back up into the west side of the park…

… along gorgeous glacial rivers -

At Diablo Lake…

… we encountered some really stiff winds. The tree on the right side of the next picture was being blown as I took the picture -

In a cove of the lake, we were able to see a small bit of the wildfires impacting our trip -

So long, from North Cascades!