Exploration was on the agenda today. We\ncrossed to the south side of the Skagit River and drove the shoreline\nroad up to the Sauk River, a tributary of the Skagit. We then drove\nup the Sauk until we got to a bridge where we crossed and then drove\nback down to near the confluence in Rockport. Just before pulling\ninto town, we diverted onto the Rockport Cascade Road, again going\neast up the south shore of the Skagit to Marblemount, a town with few\nbusinesses and a very low speed limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tIn Marblemount, we turned away from\nthe Skagit up another tributary, this one called the Cascade River.\nPeggy and I went part way up this road when we were camped nearby in\nJune. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tThe Cascade River runs in an extremely\nnarrow gorge with nearly vertical banks. The flow is mostly snowmelt\nrunning through massive prehistoric highly compressed ash deposits\nwhich gullies easily and volcanic basalt which doesn’t gully at all.\nThere are many small waterfalls right along the first 8 or 10 miles\nof road. Near the end of the paving, we pulled into a state park\ncalled Marble Creek and were able to follow the challenging skinny\ngravel road down to the river’s edge. The small campground has some\nwonderful sites and pit toilets but I am surely too big of a coward\nto pull our 34 foot monster in there. However, the terrain is\nmajestic, the river is gorgeous and it looks like a spectacular\ncamping spot for the tent crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tNot far from here is one of our\nfavorite picnic spots. There is a pullout next to the road where you\ncan take your food out, sit on the National Forest barricade and see\nexceptional views of the Cascades Range on the horizon, impossibly\nsteep forested mountains all around and the Cascade River hundreds of\nfeet below at the bottom of the gorge. It is pretty nifty. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few miles above the campground, the road continued but the paving didn’t. We tried it for a mile or two but the washboard road surface became so miserable that keeping the back end of the truck behind the front end became quite challenging, so we chickened out and turned around instead of having a senior moment and plunging to certain death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There’s a few pictures. Click the link. https:\/\/photos.app.goo.gl\/DPZnGNAdN2WTh1Gu8<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Exploration was on the agenda today. We crossed to the south side of the Skagit River and drove the shoreline road up to the Sauk River, a tributary of the Skagit. We then drove up the Sauk until we got … Continue reading