North Cascades Highway Drive

On yet another beautiful pacific northwest day (seriously! This weather is unbelievable) Tim and I decided to go on another drive which we haven't done yet- the North Cascades Highway Drive. Obviously, this drive is north of Seattle in the north cascades, hence the name. It's actually a loop that goes from the Seattle area, through the north cascades, around the Lake Chelan area east of the mountains, back through the central cascades and then finally back to the point where it started in the Seattle area. That was exhausting just typing that! The total loop is about 450 miles (not kidding) and we've seen all of it except for the North Cascades highway waaay up north so we decided just to drive up to that segment and spare the hours doing the entire loop. It's a pretty steep segment with serious inclines/altitudes so it's closed November through May. But, we've heard from countless people about how gorgeous this drive is, especially in the fall, so we decided to just check it out for ourselves before it closes in the winter. See pictures, below, for full detail:

Driving north on 1-5... at this point we are just north of Seattle in Everett (not the most attractive part of the greater Seattle area, as you can tell). But those mountains sure are pretty and that's where we're headed!

Mmmm hmm, puppy went too! Here she is, sniffing away. This was BEFORE she was a bad, bad puppy and AFTER I warned Tim about how she would be a bad puppy. More on that later.

Tim drove again...

The GPS shot of our trek through the North Cascades Highway.

Pretty mountains- they look so close but wow, it was a long drive to get to them! It took about an hour and a half just to get to the point where the North Cascades mountain drive actually started (even though we were already on the North Cascades loop and were seeing mountains all over).

Cool view of a snowy mountain straight ahead of us.

And in that hour and a half time period to get deep into the mountains, I was getting a wee bit bored. So I got camera happy. Here I was trying to capture those cool clouds.

Gorgeous fall colors... I love the fall! It was the one part of Arizona I never would have gotten used to.

Once we were deep into the mountains, we drove through several mountain tunnels. Gorgeous! I should note that right before we got to this point, we had drive through several small towns (again, resembling Iowa like on our drive down to Rainier). We then stopped at a Ranger station at about 500feet (altitude) to pee and get maps of the mountains/hikes, etc. I could continue on about this 5 minute stop for the next 2,000 words which would then define how Bella was a bad, bad, horrible puppy and then how we discovered that we should never have kids BUT I am just going to make everyone die of anticipation and WAIT. The story deserves it's own post. Anyway, the point is that I took the picture of this tunnel when I was in tears. Meaning, I could not really see through the blur. But it still turned out great, eh?

Several miles down the road when the tears stopped and I just started laughing about everything that had just happened thanks to my nice husband who knows exactly how to make things better, we discovered our first of many waterfalls. Awesome!

We got out at a point called the Gorge Dam... which is a dam on a pretty little alpine lake. There was a 1/2 mile trail that we walked to get some great pictures.

Us in front of the beautiful gorge lake.

A shot of Diablo lake, another alpine lake just up the road from the Gorge lake.

What the North Cascades Highway looks like when driving.... so pretty.

And another shot- everyone was right. This drive was amazing! I would recommend for anyone in the area or if anyone has the time when visiting.

Our stopping/turnaround point on the drive was Washington Pass. It was at an altitude of about 6000 feet and from this point (if we we were to keep going east), we'd go farther down in altitude until reaching the Lake Chelan area of Eastern Washington (which is the more seasonal part of Washington- and looks much more like a desert).

A shot of the Liberty Bell peak from our viewpoint at Washington Pass. There was a hike we really wanted to go on to get to Liberty Bell (as well as another alpine lake) but at this point it was already mid-afternoon and we knew we had a 3-4 hour drive in front of us to get back home. Bummer.

Another shot of the gorgeous mountains.

Timmy and Bella on top of Washington pass- aren't those mountains awesome?! It was so cool to be so deep into the mountains and see the whole range before us. I know, I am always raving about mountains lately but I swear, it never gets old to be in them, to see the different vantage points. It's all so different and uniquely beautiful.

A shot of the road below- where we came from.

Aww... perfect picture in front of amazing scenery.

And a picture of the puppy and I.

Another shot of the road that captures how truly high we were.

And, after we turned around at Washington pass, we saw many different views than we saw going up. This was one of them. We were amazed coming down from Rainier at how unseemingly steep it was going up and that we didn't notice. This happened again here. As we were going down, we noticed the incline and were blown away. It was quite the haul to wind through this highway in the mountains and it makes total sense why they would close the North Cascades Highway in the winter months. All in all, it was another successful day of seeing and exploring a part of our state that we hadn't seen before, and once again, it makes me all the more grateful that we live in such a beautiful place.