Journey Through the Cascades 2008

This was the second adventure of our recent journey to Washington.

We arrived in Washington Thursday afternoon, we stayed in Friday Harbor until early Saturday morning. Saturday we got up at 4:45am to catch the 6am ferry back to Anacortes so we could start our journey through the Cascade Mountains to visit my friend Jessica and her family who live about 20 minutes from Idaho. It was a seven and a half hour drive, at 5am it seemed daunting, but once we got started we quickly found it to be just an amazing day.
We decided to take highway 2 through the mountains, which is a northern route through the Cascades that took us through Stevens Pass. It was gorgeous, we saw very little traffic and very few people. It was a beautiful day and we loved the anticipation of what was going to be around the next corner.
At one point our elevation was 4061 feet, we saw snow up there along the sides of the road which made us smile.
We eventually stopped at one of the state parks where we were able to get out, walk, and stretch our legs a little. We walked down along the Wenatchee River, I had forgotten how clear all the bodies of water are there. Just amazing.
After we came through the mountains and made it to the eastern foothills of the Cascades I saw a whole other world of Washington that I never knew existed. We got to see some of the apple orchards, and what an awesome time to see them, the fall color was breathtaking. As we went on, the climate got more and more dry, the ground and plant life got more and more desert like, it was really interesting to see such a drastic change. As we continued we came to the agricultural part of Washington where we drove through about 150-200 miles of nothing but golden straw fields. It was almost like the twilight zone, miles and miles of nothing. Eventually as we drew closer to Spokane we started seeing more and more life, trees again, houses, cars, lakes, and people. After three hours of nothing but straw fields it was nice to see a little civilization again.