Rare Sunny November Day in the Northern Cascades

Today we had the last day of three days of sunshine. This many consecutive days of sun is very unusual up here at this of the year. It was interesting to hear people commenting on the joy of "November sunshine". Everyone was talking about the wonderful weather, and everyone was finagling ways to get outside and stay outside. It was actually 66 degrees yesterday afternoon. When we saw the forecast, we immediately began planning outdoor activities. One of them was to return to the lower elevations of the Northern Cascades and do some easy short hiking before the area snows moved down into lower elevations and closed the main road through these mountains.

Snow has begun at elevations over 4000 feet, and one day a couple of weeks ago we looked up at the mountains that ring the farmland valleys and found new visible snow. It was as if the mountains had gone into their closets, found their pure white winter coats and put them on. The change was that obvious, that startling, and that sudden. We realized that if we didn't take advantage of these sunny days with relatively high temperatures that the opportunity to revisit this area before we left Washington was going to be gone.

I think the most interesting scenery I saw today was a trail of cedars. Now, Washington cedar trees are not Texas hill country cedar trees. Some of the oldest ones I saw today were a couple of hundred feet high, and several feet in diameter. It was almost a disconnect for me to look down at the ground and see the cedar needles on the ground that look exactly like the needles off the cedar BUSHES in Texas. In Washington, you can't even put your arms around the trunks of the cedars, and the cedar branches start so high up that you have to look straight up directly up into the sky. I loved this trail because it had SIGNS. I love trails that have informational signs. Today I got a bunch of trees identified, and learned what happens after an area of forest experiences a fire. I won't bore you with all I learned, but it was the best kind of trail. All the maples and other deciduous trees have shed their leaves, so while walking this trail, our feet made that shush, shush sound as our feet shuffled through the fallen leaves. And it smelled like autumn today - crisp and clean with wiffs of decomposing leaves.

Another interesting facet of today was we got to see Newhalem which is a town founded in 1922 in the middle of the Cascade Mountains. It was built to house the work force that was imported to build a series of three dams on the Skagit River. (Yes, this is 'our' Skagit River that runs through Burlington.) I found out that this river starts at the Canadian border and empties into the Puget Sound. Today Newhalem is one street of 'company houses', a general store, a community center, and a resident artist who has designed a 'power temple' inside the town park. There's a restored locomotive as a tourist magnet. The preferred landscape method in front of the houses is to use different kinds of trees in interesting patterns. This place is a bizarre combination of tourist attraction and people who actually work and live in the middle of this wilderness to run the power plants and maintain the dams built in the 1920's. North Cascade National Park envelopes these dams and this town. This 'town' is less than a mile long and sandwiched between Highway 20 (one of the few roads up there) and the Skagit River. They've built a great suspension bridge over the river and it was super fun to walk across.

It is so quiet in these mountains once you get off that one main highway, it's instantly relaxing. There is so much vegetation that the oxygen levels are elevated and the air up here makes hiking such a pleasure. We did one trail through an old growth forest down to the river. As an afterthought, we took a 300 foot boardwalk trail right beside the Visitor's Center (which is already closed for the winter) and stumbled into a view of the Pickett mountain range. This is the most wild area of the Northern Cascades and is utterly without any trails. This range is a string of mountains that are about 7000 feet tall. These mountains weren't even traversed by alpine climbers until 1963! Even today, only the most experienced climbers go into this part of the park. If you want to see all the pictures from this day trip, click on the following link and scroll through the pictures until you see River Loop Trail - that's where today's pictures start.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2010Tour5CascadeMountains?authkey=Gv1sRgCOGn9vDHlquLgwE#

This was a great day. We've almost into countdown of the days we have left up here now. We are leaving at the end of the month with extremely mixed feelings. I'm so glad we got to enjoy the Northern Cascades one more time. I think we are getting ready to experience the typical autumn northwestern rainy weather - the next 10 days' weather forecast - no hint of any sunshine whatsoever, and forecast of 'showers' each day with precipitation chances ranging from 30% to 60%. It will be a quiet, soft intermittent rain not raging thunderstorms with accompanying lightening that we get in Texas. This is a part of living up here, and I'm eager to see what it's like for every day to be overcast, cloudy and with rain a real possibility. I'm wondering what adjustments that the residents make to accomodate the weather. It will be fascinating to watch for those accomodations. I'm hoping the rainy climate is going to make me appreciative of the Arizona climate we'll be rolling into in December.

Did You Ever Have Just that Perfect Day?

Have you noticed that some days are just better than others? We had the perfect day this week which was a microcosm of everything we love about being up here in the Northwest. First and foremost, the weather was absolutely perfect: cool and sunny with a blue sky dotted with snow white puffy clouds. You know, the kind of sky you see in picture postcards. We've quickly learned that when nature gives you a sunny day up here in October, it's your duty to spend it outside. Drake loaded the bikes on top of the car, and off we went.

First stop was another bike trail that is just north of us that skirts Samish Bay. While the trail was not a good as we had hoped - we only did about 2 miles - the scenery was wonderful. On of the surprising aspects about the fall season is that there really isn't any 'color'. There are a few yellow trees among the evergreens, but it isn't the multi-color extravaganza that I sort of expected. I guess that treat is for next fall in New England.

We decided to go into Fairhaven which is the old part of Bellingham and is filled with Victorian houses and buildings that are the remains of the salmon canning industry that shriveled up and died around the turn of the century. This part of Bellingham is now where the art crowd lives. The shops are cute and there are a lot of galleries - including he Good Earth Pottery Gallery which handles around 50 potters from the Northwest. Well, I was in heaven. We spent about an hour in that place picking out some gems that I couldn't live without. Fairhaven also sits right on Bellingham Bay and they have a wonderful walk along the harbor which includes a boardwalk right out over the water. A leftover remnant of the salmon canning factories is this brown lump in the bay - which we originally thought was a big rock. Instead of being a rock - it's actually sheets of tin leftover from making cans. The companies just pushed the tin sheet remnants out their dock doors and gradually, they fused together to make a big lump of tin in the harbor.

This entire area is scattered with Native Indian Reservations - the Swinomish, the Snohomish, the Lummi to name a few. They all have their own casinos, so Drake has been able to indulge his love of playing blackjack. We dropped into the Lummi Casino for an hour - casinos are great places to find clean bathrooms when you're traveling. We wound up winning $38 - not a fortune, but it paid for lunch at the Colophon Cafe in Fairhaven - one of the many restaurants up here that base their menu on locally grown food. Drake has become something of a connoisseur of salmon sandwiches. My speciality is fish and chips and micro brews.

As the day wound down, we realized that there was going to be a terrific sunset. That's another surprising thing - they don't have that many great sunsets up here. There's a local highway called "Chuckanut Drive" - isn't that a fun name - I love to say it out loud. Anyway, it winds south along the shore between Bellingham and the Skagit Valley, and there is a restaurant we had marked down as someplace we wanted to try. The Oyster Bar sits right on Samish Bay, high up on a bluff, and we arrived just in time for the sunset and a lovely dinner. Part of the 'farming community' that we live in not only farms on land, but they farm the water too. The Taylor family raises shellfish - including oysters (huge ones - each about the size of a chicken tender). Again, this restaurant uses as many local foods as possible, so not only were the oysters homegrown, but so were the potatoes, and all the vegetables on the plates.

Speaking of the farming community, I have loved living in a farming valley that claims to be some of the richest farmland in the USA. This is a partial view of the Skagit Valley. There are mainly family farms here, some of which go back five generations. They raise 90% of the red potatoes consumed in the country - at least that's what the InFARMation radio station claims (AM1630). They also raise berries, vegetables, flowers, specialty meats (like bison), and some wheat and hay to feed their dairy cattle and there's a thriving cheese industry. There's a real movement here to preserve farmland.

I think the recession hit just in time. Drake jokes that every house is for sale here, but the truth is that you can see lots of 'second homes' and rural farmettes up for sale now. Most of them have been built in the past 5 years on farmland. We wanted to buy some cider (both hard and soft) and we only had to drive 2 miles from our apartment to find both. Here's a great picture of the produce shop of the Gordon Skagit Farm - it's 3rd generation and has been in the family for 3 generations. I had no idea there were so many varieties of squash and pumpkin (about 40 types were for sale here - including heirloom varieties that have been raised since the 19th century). We got our soft cider here as well as a small pumpkin to decorate our doorway for Halloween. Then, we motored another mile down the road to the Tulip Winery which makes hard cider in addition to wine. Boy, is that stuff tasty - about 7% alcohol volume. We are currently trying two types of hard cider. It's funny to drink something that tastes like apples with a kick.

The final perfection up here for me is the flowers. I send out my 'weekly flower picture' to a few friends who I know love flowers. I buy fresh flowers (dahlias) for the house every week. They are so common up here that the price is $.20 a stem. Here's a picture of this week's flower arrangement. Cheers!

We've still having a great time, and next week it's a trip into Seattle to see the 150 original Picasso paintings and drawings from Paris on exhibit at the Seattle Museum of Art. We'll probably make it a big day trip with other stops. Until then.........oh, and GO RANGERS!