Trying to Cross Washington's Northern Cascades

Saturday and Sunday, June 21-22, 2014

Saturday morning's drive took us back over the bridge across the Columbia, with a grand view of the Grand Coulee Dam again! In town we crossed the border into the Colville Indian Reservation and traversed it northwest for a few hours, as we left the Columbia and headed back into the foothills and then the mountains, before descending to the Okanagon River valley at Omak. From there we drove west into the Cascades again.

Grand Coulee Dam with the spillway normally dry.

Looking down the Columbia in the Colville Indian Reservation

Orchard with netting to keep out birds

The east (Sunny) side of the Cascades

For lunch we stopped in the small town of Twisp, and ate at the highly rated Twisp River Pub. Sitting on the deck along the river, we enjoyed their microbrews, and Greg had, of course, fish and chips! Twisp is in the Methow Valley with its huge network of cross country ski trails, that become mountain biking trails in the summer. We were surrounded by bike jersey and spandex wearing mountain bikers. Greg got the urge to bike, so we drove back off the main highway, and up a winding gravel road in the national forest to the Buck Lake campground. It only had 10 sites. We managed to snag the next to last one amongst the ponderosa pines, and relaxed in the somewhat cooler temps. Since we were still on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, it was still quite warm and dry. The Methow Valley is at a lower elevation as well, so we opened up all the windows to stay cool.

They keep the muddy mountain bikers outside

OK, so the desert side of the Cascades may not be the best place to order fish & chips...

"Cowboy Cute" Winthrop town center

The Shelby car club must have been in town

Sunday morning Greg mapped out a route from Buck Lake down a trail and set off to see what he was getting himself in to. We didn't have two maps that matched each other, so he found out that the climbing was more than he wanted to tackle on his bike, so he turned around, came back up the trail, and set off to explore the forest service roads farther up from the campground. A few hours later he returned. It was a long slog up, and a ten minute ride back!

Meadow along the Buck Lake Singletrack trail

After a tough climb, this Forest Service road suddenly ended.

Looking back down the valley.

We packed up and set out around noon, while I researched where to spend the night before we headed back into the big city of Bellingham on the other side of the Cascades for our oil change. There were several lakes and campgrounds on the other side of the two high passes. Before we started over the twisty, narrow-shouldered road, with no cellphone coverage, we pulled over for lunch. We were in the large gravel parking lot for the cross country skiing trailhead. Just before we pulled out again, we heard a loud hissing sound outside my door. Jumping out, we saw the right front passenger go flat in 30 seconds. The valve split and all the air whooshed out!

What better place to have a flat than a 2-acre Highway Dept. maintenance yard? An hour earlier, we were 15 miles up a steep, one-lane, dirt Forest Service road with no cell signal!

I freaked out because, I knew that I lost cellphone service a few miles back. Greg discovered he had 1-2 bars. There is an advantage to splitting our phone service between AT&T and Verizon. He got a call in to Coachnet, the RV'ers version of AAA. Two and a half hours later, after several phone calls from their rep, who said she was having trouble finding someone in a 50 mile radius, she would need to expand to 100 miles, a mechanic showed up from nearby Twisp. He quickly decided to change out the valve instead of mounting the spare tire, so we would still have a spare to go over the mountains with. He was pretty impressed with where, and how the valve went out, and kept telling Greg he should play the lottery, it was his lucky day!


By that time it was 4:30, and we didn't want to climb up and over the high passes, so we drove a few miles to another forest service campground, Klipchuck, near Route 20, and we found a nice site in the tall ponderosa pines within earshot of a rushing stream. I do sleep better with “water features”. We were hot, sticky, and tired from standing around in the hot sun during our breakdown. Showers would have to wait until we got to the coast the next day. Before dinner we had a nice conversation with a couple who farms outside of Salem, Oregon near the Coastal Range. We were surprised to learn that a lot of farmers in the Willamette Valley grow grass seed. When we mentioned a niece in Eugene, and how much we liked it, they both scowled and complained about how much it had changed, and Portland as well. Not fans of Portlandia, I guess. We said no more, and the conversation shifted to Alaska. Someday I will write a commentary on the topic of conservative RV'ers, why there seem to be so many of them, why they assume we are conservative too, and why we, unlike them, do not carry a gun in our rig...

When those ponderosas drop pine cones on the RV, they are Loud!

Ahhh, back to the water feature, and a good night's sleep.