Near our campground is a road extending north that took us into the Mount Baker National Forest. We elected to follow it today, all the way to the point where we ran out of paving or about 22 miles. At the northern end of our drive, we were situated with Baker Lake to the south and way north we could see Mount Baker, another one of the stratovolcanos that make up the Ring of Fire or at least the portion in the U.S. It is a land of very lofty mountains, dense conifer forests, gurgling streams and rushing rivers and abundant waterfalls.
About halfway back down the road, we came to Baker Dam. There is a regular and an RV campground near the dam but, strangely, there are no electrical hookups for RVs. There are sewer and water but no electrical connections in a campground associated with a hydroelectric dam. It seems like getting power to a campground a quarter mile from the turbines should not be difficult but, apparently, it was.
We had taken the drive up to Baker Lake during previous visits so our excursion today was pretty short. That allowed time for us to take on a longer excursion up the Skagit River to a non-town called Marblemount where we turned away from the Skagit and headed up a tributary river called the Cascade. We only knew about the Cascade River because we spoke with a docent when we went to Diablo Reservoir a few days back. She told us tourists about this place – a place with few that know of its existence.
Not surprisingly, we wandered into another stunning wilderness. There are glaciers covering the sides of the mountains. There are abundant waterfalls, some right next to the road and all of them feeding the Cascade which ultimately dumps into the Skagit. Far below us we could see the Cascade River running in a steep-sided gorge. It is an amazing shade of turquoise, like all the rivers here that get their snowmelt from the glacial snowfields above. There are huge clumps of colorful wildflowers. We were so delighted with the scenery that we pulled up hard to the railing in a roadside turnout and had lunch. Today there was almost no traffic; we might have seen ten cars during our entire afternoon.
On our way back from this visual wonderland, we stopped at Skagit Trust’s wayside again so we could check out the eagles. They seemed to be fine.
We took a few snapshots. To see ’em, click the link.https://photos.app.goo.gl/s1Jno4UxXFP3kiZS6