2007/06 BC trip - Loup Loup Pass |
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Sunday July 22nd
We left for home early on a damp morning. It was a Sunday, and there were long lines of the faithful queued up outside the local Tim Horton’s donut shop, one of about six in the Chilliwack area. We collected a dozen to sustain us for the long drive home.
We were going back through the USA this time, as we hadn’t done that for a while. We joined an even longer line-up for the border at Sumas, but took a short cut through the duty-free shop. We thought that with the Canadian dollar being so strong Sumas would be busy again with Canadian shoppers, but it looks like the long line-ups have deterred the shoppers because Sumas looked even deader than before. The main street was lined with closed stores and gas stations.
We drove down to Sedro Woolley and then up into the North Cascade mountains. 
Almost all of the traffic was going the other way, weekend campers coming home in the rain, so we had an easy drive. We stopped for lunch by the Skagit River, which was full from bank to bank and, as usual, moving very fast. The river starts up near Hope, flows into the enormous Ross Lake and Diablo Lake reservoirs and then down into Puget Sound. It was almost all snow melt and made its own icy mist on a damp day.
We stopped at the overlook of Diablo Lake, blue-green even on this cloudy day. It was dry there but Rainy Pass, as usual, lived up to its name. As we came down from the pass it was as if someone had thrown a 
switch. The rain stopped, the temperature went up thirty degrees, the rain forest 
disappeared, and we were looking at a much thinner pine forest surrounded by brown grass.
We camped at Loup Loup Pass in the Okanogan national forest, surrounded by giant ponderosa pines and legions of squirrels and chipmunks. Yep, the spelling is different from Canada’s Okanagan.