It was a travel day today so we put all our inside stuff away, disconnected all our outside stuff and hooked the Barbarian Invader to Charlotte before pulling away from our spot in the Mount Vernon Thousand Trails Preserve. Since this preserve does not have full hookups, we got to stop by the dump station on the way out to empty our waste tanks. Soon we were on our way. We drove about a quarter mile to I-5, turned south and headed for the Thousand Trails Preserve entitled Grandy Creek which is near the rustic town of Concrete.
Concrete probably should have been called “Cement” because it came into being due to the building of the Washington Portland Cement Company here. It is located at the junction of the Baker and Skagit Rivers in Skagit County. The earliest settlement (1890) here was called Minnehaha for some reason but after a post office was built, they changed the name to Baker. Then, in 1905, the cement plant was built across the river from Baker and it was called Cement City. In 1908, Cement City and Baker merged and became Concrete. I don’t know if they make any concrete here but the cement silos of Portland Superior Cement still stand with the words “Welcome to Concrete” in faded paint on the side.
As you leave Highway 20 and drive into town, you will drive under the Concrete High School which is built above a big box culvert spanning over the road. There is also the Henry Thompson Bridge here, named after a Scottish immigrant, settler and county commissioner who promoted its construction. According to Wikipedia, the single arch bridge was the longest single-span reinforced concrete bridge in the world but maybe only in Washington. Facts become a bit hazy here. The bridge did not get named until after Henry was squashed by a logging train in 1918. There are about 790 souls living in Concrete although it looks like it may have had a much larger population when they manufactured cement here in the past.
Despite the tiny town, the area scenery is splendid with enormous stands of cedar trees. It is also the the beginning of a magnificent road which is known as the North Cascades Highway and we will be traveling up this road alongside the beautiful Skagit River tomorrow. It goes past both Baker and Ross Lakes into the North Cascades National Park. We drove part of this road two years ago when we stayed in the same campground and noted the water, due to coming from beneath glaciers, is turquoise.
We noted an interesting issue here. Not long after we pulled into Grandy Creek Preserve and set up our trailer, a group of other campers pulled into a spot not far from ours. At first, they seemed perfectly normal. After a while, however, I noted there was something making a sound that we were not familiar with. Initially, it reminded me of something but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. When I asked Peggy to listen for the sound, she heard it and almost immediately identified it as the sound the Martians make in the movie Mars Attacks. Careful listening by me made me realize that was it. Initially, it sounded like single “Akk!” noises. Soon, we could hear “akk…akk…akk…AKK! AKK! AKK!…akk.” It continued periodically through the afternoon. I think it is one of our neighbors. I hope his head doesn’t explode when I play some Slim Whitman music.