Washington Coast 2012 Days 8 & 9

I spent two days with Jim and Joanne at their lovely home on Lake Roosevelt, eating salmon Jim caught and fresh veggies from their garden. (I'm inspired. About the gardening, not the fishing!) Jim gave me a family history puzzle--love those!  And I figured it out, of course now he has more questions!  That's always the way with history-answer one question find six more!  The mornings have been so nice sitting on their porch with a cup of tea, lake watching.  Quinn loved their wrap around decks and the fact that they leave their doors open for quite a while in the morning.  She spent her time going out one door, checking everything out outside and coming in the other door to check on us!

Today we are off, west and north again.  First stop Grand Coulee Dam.

Huge, huge, huge! I have no idea how much electricity it generates.  It holds the water back to make Lake Roosevelt where Jim lives.

Then we headed up to North Cascades National Park.  Park of the drive was through apple orchard country.  I always wondered where those Washington Apples came from-most of the eastern part of the state is wheat country.  I bought some more cherries, Yum.  But even better I bought fresh blueberries-some the size of my thumb!  So Good.  North Cascades was a very pretty drive going up over the cascade mountains and coming down the other side.  Quinn and I stopped going up for lunch (my usual-peanut butter) and I got to listen to the creek I couldn't see and smell the distinct smell of mountains-sunshine, pine trees and dust!  Coming down I had to stop for these photos:

Lake Diablo- Yes the water is that color!

Still some snow up there!

The river leaving the lake keeps that color until it hits the bay.    See the white puff?  The birth of a fire!

I asked at the visitor's center about the color of the water and was told that this is the most glaciated river in the world,  I think he said a hundred glaciers feed this river!  The blue comes from minerals picked up by the glaciers.

Someday I might fly into Seattle and spend a week up here at a resort, or not.

We finished the day at Bellingham, WA.  Found a lake with a three mile path around it for Quinn to stretch her legs (me too) and called it a day.