Something of a Mixed Bag

Welp.  There are those kinds of days in every vacation of which today was one.  Lemme explain.

I will go to my grave insisting that North Cascades National Park deserves a bigger slice of the attention pie that is apportioned out to America's national parks.  Sure there's Yosemite and Yellowstone and Grand Canyon, and some of the other big, giant heavy hitters.  But this bad boy, of which you may or may not have even heard, is basically a slice of absurdly vertical remote mountainous wilderness that rivals those places in gratuitous natural beauty, and just piles it on and on and on (OK, so it doesn't have a Yosemite Valley or "Grand" canyon, but gracious does it have an unfathomably huge number of towering, misshapen mountains with waterfalls busting out of glaciers everywhere.  Actually, it' kind of like the mountains that ring Mordor, but with a happier vibe emanating from them).

Well, we were supposed to drive up this 25 mile long gravel road to a campsite and hike to a very, very, very pretty high mountain pass, only once we actually did drive ALL THAT WAY, and get out of the car, each of us were beset by a literal cloud of black flies so thick as to almost obscure our exposed skin.  No joke, people, these nasty buggers were ubiquitous. Whereas even though the view from the parking lot was bonkers, we made it no more than 10 minutes up the first set of switchbacks before being so covered with flies that we felt we had not choice but to beat the hastiest of retreats back to the car and drive outta there.  We were all crushed, and not least because it took so long to get up to Cascade Pass, but because we desperately wanted to see how much more beautiful it could possibly get.

Erica did manage to take a few pictures.  And, fast-forwarding a bit, we also took a bunch more pictures with our main camera later on on our replacement hike.  But it was only at that later point in the day that I realized I had FORGOTTEN TO TAKE THE CAMERA'S MEMORY CARD OUT OF MY COMPUTER FROM LAST NIGHT AND PUT IT BACK IN THE CAMERA.  So our memory card stayed all day in our hotel room in this very computer, and we had to subsist on phone pics.  So here are the only two pics we did get from the scene:

Note the glaciers, waterfalls, and extreme beauty

Ditto

Well, what to do? We decided to cut bait and drive over an hour back down the mountain to another section of the park.  We choose the Diablo Lake area.  Diablo Lake is kind of a Lake Como situation, where mountains plunge dramatically thousands of feet into water, so we made out alright, really.  We hiked the Thunder Knob trail, which is weenier than our original plans called for, but ended up getting us up to some mighty scenic country.  Enjoy some snappers, won't you?

A majestic, fly-less old growth forest, without any biting black flies

Diablo Lake

Thunder Knob trail

To of the Thunder Knob trail, with a fly-free Diablo Lake in the background

When we finally made it back to town, James was fit to burst about swimming in the motel pool.  Erica took him, and I got some delicious taco takeout from the Mexican grocery store with which the Best Western shares a parking lot.  We scarfed the tacos poolside, then crashed for the evening.

All in all, great day, the snafus notwithstanding.  Tomorrow we leave our beloved Best Western, camera-ready this time, for the Great White North.  Erica has never been to Canada (nor James), and I've never been to Vancouver, so it's going to be a true adventure tomorrow, and I can't wait.  Until then...Buen Camino!

Grant