Travels of Geo Nova: Into The Lower 48

The Caravan is over and we move on to the last and final leg of our 2018 travel adventure. The final banquet for the caravan was a bittersweet experience, good memories and sad goodbyes. We know that the friendships both new and ongoing will continue. Diana did a great job organizing the banquet. In fact one of our leaders said he had been to a bunch and this was the best by a long shot.

The ride out of Canada brought us along the Frazier River Gorge. The road was winding and around every bend there was a beautiful view of the surrounding landscape. Some of our drive took us over mountain passes that had been blanketed with snow the previous day. We haven’t seen such a sight in 7 years. The snow did not present any difficulty for us but it painted the landscape into a beautiful portrait. The boarder crossing was perhaps our longest. We honestly stated that we had some vegetables on board and were sidelined for an agricultural inspection. Everyone was pleasant and professional. The end result we had to surrender a small bag of veggies along with an hour of our time.

Our first stop back in the USA is near the town of Anacortes Washington. This area will provide us a place to explore the area around and on Puget sound. We spent our time hiking and bird watching in several parks. Several of our drives took us through some beautiful farm land. Our final day in Anacortes we booked a whale watching tour. As it turns out we were gifted with perfect weather for this event, abundant sunshine and light and variable winds thus flat seas. The trip was a great success in addition to seeing several humpback whales we ran into a pod of approximately 50 Orca whales. For over an hour they provided a spectacular show. All around you could both hear and see whales. It was breeding season so they were very animated showing multiple breeches along with tail slaps and swimming upside down. We capped off the evening with a delightful dinner in a local restaurant.

Next stop, North Cascade National Park often refereed to as America’s Switzerland or the lower 48’s Alaska. Among other things the park is home to 300 glaciers, far more than Glacier NP. The area is a vast wilderness with very little infrastructure. Like all places the area comes with a long history but what makes this unique is that in 1920 Seattle Light and Power developed a system of dams to produce electricity. At that time there were no roads into the area. The only access was by foot or horseback. They built a railroad to bring the necessary equipment to make the project happen. The road in here was not completed until 1970. They also built the company town Newhalem to house the workforce needed to run the facility. Some of the original town still exist along with more recent buildings. The Park is also unique in that it is home to 5 different life zones starting with a rain forest at the bottom and a glacier covered Alpine zone at the mountain peaks. We went on some great hikes along with an adventurous ride up to the back side of the peaks affording gorgeous views of some of the glaciers. The ride was not for the faint of heart. The last 15 miles was a dirt road that became more narrow as we progressed along. The last 5 miles was a one lane pot holed road only wide enough for one vehicle to pass, completely devoid of guard rails or any safety measure usually found on park roads. The reward for this were stunning up close views of the glaciers. In the parking lot at the trail head a car with several woman arrived and the drivers comment was “thank god there are other human beings at the end of this road”.