bobanddenisewanderlust

 We took the dogs with us on our trip today. We went back out to Rt. 2, and drove west, back over Stevens pass(4061 ft). The pass is named after John Frank Stevens, the first European American to discover it. Indigenous Americans had picked berries in the area, but used another nearby pass to cross the Cascade Mountains. Stevens Ski Resort is currently at the top of the pass.  It looked small and pretty steep, but ski resorts tend to look that way. Many times there is more to the resort that you cannot see from the road or parking lot. The resort was closed, but the travel brochure states that they are open for mountain biking. I guess that is on the weekends. The pass was the site of the one of the worst railway disasters in American railway history. On February 23, 1910, two Great Northern Railway trails were stalled on the tracks at the Cascade Tunnel Station on Stevens Pass because of a heavy snow storm and avalanches. Six days later, on March 1, an avalanche pushed both trains 150 ft. down into the valley, burying the train cars and killing 96 people.

We continued down the western side of the mountain, and stopped at Deception Falls. We hiked  up to the falls.

This was pretty, but it was cold and moist. When we left the campground it was high 60’s, with sun, and warming up. Now it was 50’s and rainy on this side of the pass. So we hurried through. On the way back, Roxie did not want to walk across the bridge. The bridge was an open metal screen, and you could see down into the water. We thought she was just scared, but it turns out she had caught a claw in the mesh and tore the nail. I was driving and Bob noticed the blood on the back seat cover. So we pulled over as soon as I could find a pullout. We applied pressure and stopped the bleeding. The next town was Skykomish. We pulled into town, spotted the library, and headed there to ask where there was a vet. The library was closed, but there was a man working on the internet in a chair outside. I asked him and he said, in Monroe. That was farther than we were planning to go, but there was a van parked in front of the library, and the guy in there, also working on the WiFi from the library, overheard us and hopped out of the van. He told me there was a Vet in Sultan, about 25 miles west, and closer than Monroe. So we headed there. Bob tried to call, but our cell reception was bad. When we arrived, the gal took Roxie right in. Turns out the nail was just torn, she did not lose the claw. They cleaned it up, and did not charge us! Wasn’t that nice…

Skykomish was supposed to be our last stop, so we were farther east than we wanted to be. We found a picnic table in front of the police station and ate our picnic lunch, then turned around to go back east. We had seen a grocery store advertizing Rainier cherries for $2.99 per lb. so we stopped in to buy some more. We have been overdosing on Rainier cherries. They are sooooo good, but in Maryland they were $9.99 per lb. So $2.99, even here, was a steal, especially since they were the large ones! They only had 1 lb left, but oh well, we will keep looking for more!

We returned to the motor home, started laundry, worked on the blog, barbecued pork chops and had a campfire.

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