Today only some minor check-in paperwork, scheduling of the honey wagon to empty our holding tanks later and a propane check were on our daily fun chart. Our on-board propane supply turned out to be adequate and the honey wagon and paperwork headaches were over in about 10 minutes and we were free to spend the rest of the day exploring in this remote northeastern corner of Washington.
We drove from our spot at Little Diamond RV Park and Campground the few miles down to Diamond Lake, where we are not camped. Diamond Lake is completely surrounded by vacation homes and that pretty much eliminates public access to this pretty lake. At Diamond Lake we turned west on US-2 for a few miles before turning north on WA-211 until we got to the west shoreline of the Pend Oreille River and WA-20 which run through some gorgeous territory before looping a bit into Canada and returning to the USA just in time to pour into the Columbia River. WA-20 passes through alternating hilly forest and flat emerald pastures on the way through the communities of Usk, Cusick, Blueslide, Tiger, Ione and Metaline. Just a few miles short of Canada, in Metaline Falls we turned onto a gravel road which took us to a treasure called Sullivan Lake which is very pretty. We saw many deer, some bald eagles, a couple of loons and some cormorants all hanging out near the lake. It was so nice in this area, we stopped at an old mill spillway and found a spot in the shade overlooking the water where we ate our lunch.
All of this great scenery falls within the Colville National Forest. Near Sullivan Lake are not less than four federal campgrounds and not one of them had more than a half dozen occupied campsites and plenty of vacancies. Peggy and I would like to come back to this place. We finally got off the back road onto WA-20 and headed back toward our RV spot near Newport. This sparsely-occupied part of Washington is gorgeous and we are delighted to be here.
We took a few pix along the way today and you can see ’em if you click here