Driving the Methow Valley

Methow River Out My Window

2019-09-17 Tuesday

If we got a later than normal start this morning, I have to blame it on having to finalize yesterday’s blog this morning! Working with my iPad, I can’t decide if the problem is the blog platform or the iPad attempting to utilize it. In any case, it took me at least an hour, was tedious, and put us behind “schedule.” Which of course is always flexible.

We did finally leave, however, after noting how beautiful the view of the river was. The dam was clearly visible (well, the top of it, and the road above which we drove on yesterday), and the river was lovely, with little whitecaps on the surface from the breeze. In fact, it seemed like a beautiful day altogether, but that changed fairly soon into a mostly overcast, threatening-rain look, which we’re getting pretty used to. Isn’t this what the Pacific Northwest weather is supposed to be like? The only thing is, the “agenda” today was scenery— we were going to follow the North Cascades Scenic Highway.

We drove down to the town of Coulee Dam, but instead of heading for the visitor center and the town’s “main drag”, we headed back up into the hills again, driving northwest toward Northern Cascades National Park, which was our destination. But not five minutes later, we were stopping again at a scenic overlook. It was definitely worth the stop— a stunning look at the dam and Lake Roosevelt behind it (which I called the river in the last paragraph—it’s kind of both now) and in the other direction, the Columbia flowing on again.  We were up on the overlook (no one else around) for about 20 minutes before we dragged ourselves away.

Looking down on the Grand Coulee Dam from overlook

Very soon, we crossed over the river at the Chief Joseph Dam (we stopped to take photos and have lunch) and were then in the Colville Indian Reservation. It seems a major agricultural activity is raising apples, and we were amazed at the size of the apple orchards and the shipping crates piled up at warehouses along our route. I had noted the straight lines of trees from the scenic overlook, but hadn’t registered that they were trees at all, they looked so small. Yet trees they are, and there were thousands of apples on the ground as well as the crop still in the trees. 
 

Deb's "selfie" from overlook, with Columbia River in background, and the town of Grand Coulee

One of the other things we noticed as we passed the apple orchards along the road, was that there were often rows of tiny houses (all identical) built near the orchards. We decided these must be for use by seasonal workers who come to help pick and pack the fruit. I wonder how many of them are still coming, with the restrictions in place on visas for workers now? Maybe that's why there are so many apples on the ground!

Chief Joseph Dam, with the world's longest pumphouse on the right

I should mention that for a lot of this time, we were driving along the Columbia River. We kept singing the Woody Guthrie song, “Roll On, Columbia,” which seemed like the appropriate sound track. But at Pateros,  we left the Columbia and started up the Methow River Valley (Pateros is at the conjunction of the two rivers.) The valley is absolutely beautiful—the river kept winding from one side of us to the other, and the meadows and trees along the way were delightful. I had a road guide with me that I’d picked up, called “The Cascade Loop: Washington’s Ultimate Road Trip”, and although we aren’t following the entire loop, we’re doing at least half of it, starting at Pateros. So I had a guide to each town we encountered, and suggestions of what to look for.

Unfortunately we couldn’t stop at all of them, because they mostly looked delightful. I think we will have to come back to do some of the things that the guide suggested. We just drove through the first two, but when we came to the town of Twisp, we stopped to buy groceries at Hank’s, the friendly-looking grocery store. It turned out to have very upscale offerings as well as some of the basics we needed, and my trip inside took longer than i expected. I also ran into the “pharmacy” next door, which was more of a souvenir shop than drugstore, and found two small items we’d needed for the RV. And we parked in front of the very complete hardware store, where I found two MORE items! So we helped the economy, but sadly did not stop at the arts center which seems to be what Twisp is all about. The entire Methow Valley, in fact, is apparently something of an artists and craftsmen Mecca, and there are a lot of places to shop for local items. I had planned to do that originally, but the practical grocery needs got in the way, sadly. In retrospect, I wish I’d stopped. Because...

I was concerned that we still had about 75 miles to go to reach Diablo, the town where I expected to find a campground for tonight, inside North Cascades National Park. But the weather had been getting gloomier all day, and we’d had several rain showers already. Now it was well after 4:00, and I was noticing the heavy layer of clouds above us. The route we are taking is known for being scenic, but an awful lot of it was just gray. We went WAY too quickly through Winthrop, which was a very cute place where the entire town’s main drag was “retrofitted” to look like the original 1890s storefronts of the town. It looked like a movie set—everything was “Old West” look. But except for one quick snapshot as we turned the corner, we didn’t stop there either. 

About 10 miles later, we passed a National Forest Service campground, and I was seriously thinking we should stop for the night at one of those instead. The grayness was definitely impeding the scenic-ness. So when we came to the next NFS campground sign, we decided we’d just look at it, and if it looked okay/nice, we’d stay. It turned out to be fairly large, with about 40 campsites (this is large for an NFS campground, which often have 10-15 sites only.) It was deep in the forest, and we decided that since it was already almost 5:00, and dark from the rain clouds, we’d just stop for the day. So that is what we did. But if I’d known we weren’t going to drive all the way to Diablo tonight, I’d have stayed in Twisp and gone shopping. And I’d have found a place to stop in Winthrop and gone on one of their pedestrian bridges across the river. As I said, we are going to have to come back here! We had to skip way too many things. I need an extra week!!

We are parked tonight in a very nice site, with nothing but trees around us, and there’s a river behind us, although it is so much lower down than we are, we can’t see it. But we can hear it rushing away, and that’s a sweet sound to hear in a very dark forest in a national forest campground. We don’t have a single bar on our phones, or glimmer of connectivity, so we are on our own. Which means Joe and Cassie are already asleep, and I think I’ll go to sleep early again too. I’d like to cover that last 50 miles or so to Diablo quickly tomorrow morning, so we can spend the rest of the day exploring the park.