Wednesday 13 August
Trip Start
Apr 13, 2008
1
128
155
Trip End
Oct 27, 2008
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Winthrop,
Washington,
United States
Friday, August 22, 2008
We drifted down the hill about 8.30 and went back to the café to check emails again and have more coffee. Alexa was already there doing some more business so we met there to thank her for her generous hospitality.
We got going again just before lunch and drove in towards Okanogan National Forest. We are actually heading for North Cascades National Park but it seems to be taking us ages to get there!
As we now know exactly how many days we have left we have got a sort of plan of what we are going to do and where we are going, right up until we park at the airport on the 25th! This of course is not set in stone, but as we are getting pretty close to the Canadian border and Vancouver I doubt whether we will deviate much from our plans now.
We are heading towards the weekend and we are not far from Seattle, so we know that we have to be a bit careful about finding camp spots on a Friday and Saturday. We will hang around the National Forest area until Sunday morning and then make a dash for the West Coast... and then hope to enter Canada on Tuesday morning.
We swam in a lovely river in Twisp and then drove on to Winthrop which has been built to look like a Western town. It sounds bad but it really was very nice. We were able to walk on old wooden slatted path ways and we even found a magnificent ice cream parlour that gave us a few more ideas.....
We also visited a fish hatchery which was amazing. A guy there called Kent happened to be there working on his Beaver Project and invited us to take a really close up look at some real beavers there. He and his team work for the National Forest Service and they are trying to locate beavers that are becoming pests by building there dams in spots along the river and interrupting water flows in the wrong places. They are taking them out and housing them at the hatchery for a few months before relocating them much higher up in the hills in streams that they can happily build their little homes without upsetting the water systems. In fact by putting them way up high they are actually having a positive impact on water high up by trapping some of it higher up in the mountains. Holly even got to touch one of them!
One of the employees there, Chris - hi Chris! gave us directions to camp up in the forest 18 miles up the road so we went up and found the loveliest campsite by the river with a sandy little beach for swimming.
There was only 1 other family camping there with us overnight.
