The events of Thursday, July 8, 2010

We started today with a late morning. We all got dressed, but decided to wait on breakfast because our milk supply had diminished. After stopping to refuel and picking up some milk (only 2% lowfat milk was available – yuck!), we stopped at an overlook and ate breakfast there. Then, we started our journey to North Cascades National Park.

First, we swung by the Visitor’s Center and checked out all of the exhibits there and then walked out of the back of the Visitor’s Center and went on a short interpretative walk to an overlook of Picket’s Range. The interpretative walk had all these signs identifying birds we might see, and if you looked very closely you could see wooden model of the bird tacked to a tree. Abby also became a Junior Ranger and received a patch with a butterfly on it.

We drove a little more, on the way passing a few waterfalls. We then hiked Thunder Knob Trail, a steep nature walk. This trail had a guide and trail markers to teach us about the area. Caitlin really liked the lichen moss and Dad made a piece of it into a long funny-looking moustache.  Then we headed out for lunch at Diablo Lake Overlook. Diablo Lake, like all the lakes in the North Cascades NP is a glacier fed lake. The glaciers pick up “rock flour” as they move and deposit them in the lakes, turning the lakes a gorgeous green color.  The lakes were beautiful, but Dad was disappointed when he realized they were all manmade.

We then drove to Rainy Pass. Here we had a choice between hiking part of the Pacific Crest Trail (Dad and Ben’s choice) or hiking the Rainy Lake Trail which would take us to Rainy Lake (the girls choice). After 5 minutes on the upper trail and no view in site, we switched to the Rainy Lake Trail. This lake was not manmade. It is a subalpine kettle lake, made from the depression of a melting glacier. It is fed by a melting glacier and there were two huge beautiful waterfalls on the opposite side of the lake. We all dipped our toes in the cold lake, nearly freezing our feet.

We made our final brief stop at Washington Pass Overlook. This has a path that goes out on top of the cliffs and overhangs. From here you can see the Liberty Bell Rock, but we didn’t think it looked very much like a bell.

Then we drove to a seemingly very populated campground and, after a pleasant mosquito free chicken dinner, went swimming in the nearby lake that was a short walk from our campsite. The water was surprisingly warm and we all swam out to the buoys and had a lot of fun trying to balance all four of us kids on the buoy until we all fell off. But we were persistent and even though in truth we never really succeeded, we had a lot of fun! We had decided to use the RV’s shower instead of the camp showers and this led to some fairly interesting showers - we had to use pitchers of water to rinse out our hair because of the light flow of water. So it was decided that we will use the camp’s showers the next time, (no matter the cost), and we went to bed after an active and eventful day.