2005/06 Alaska Trip - Road West - North Cascades to Chilliwack |
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Wednesday June 29th
Wednesday was to be another driving day, a shame as the weather was improving. We drove back roads, through pleasant wheat-growing farmland, across the border into Washington State. We rejoined the freeway at Opportunity, and stopped off in Spokane to get a new GFCI. From there west the country gets progressively drier, and it would be desert if it weren’t for irrigation from the Columbia River. It was 95 when we stopped at the Grand Coulee Dam (remember Lonnie Donnegon), about normal for this area in the summer. It was a hard, hot grind over the mountains to the towns of Omak and Okanogan where we’d intended to camp but we didn’t find the campground, so we continued on to Winthrop, a town for weekend cowboys. We opted for the Big Twin Lakes campground, a nice peaceful spot, with few other campers, lots of green grass, a shallow lake, and a visiting deer herd.
Thursday June 30th
Thursday was to be our last day of travel for a while. We were following Highway 20, a road built over the North 
Cascades as recently as the 1970s. It was not yet on the maps for our first trip in 1977. The road involves some serious climbing over Rainy Pass and then Washington Pass and then a fast run downhill along the Skagit River. We had a delay while the bulldozers were clearing a path through a big landslide near the Diablo dam.
We crossed the border into Canada at Sumas with no problems except for some confusion between Sandie and me about the procedures for picking up our duty-free allowance. This was a serious matter as a $15 bottle from the duty-free shop costs about $35 in Canada!
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