North Cascades National Park

Despite our plans to leave early, we didn’t end up leaving until about 10:30am. It was hard saying goodbye to aunts and uncles and cousins and dogs, but we have some exciting stops planned for our route back to Wisconsin.

Zoom in to see everyone waving goodbye from the front door!

Uncle Alex had messaged us saying that he had used his 3D printer to make fidget cubes for the kids, and we should stop by his apartment to pick them up. So we drove into Seattle first, and right away noticed that the van was making weird noises. I don’t know much about automobiles, so Joe would probably describe the problem better, but neither of us felt great about the whining/buzzing sounds coming from our van. We tried to look up some auto shop places in Seattle, but they were all crazy busy and backed up, and nobody had time to help us with our van on such short notice. So we decided to just go ahead and drive out of the city and try to find some place to stop more outside the city.

Unfortunately every place we stopped was booked for days, or said they only did oil changes or whatnot and couldn’t help. So we just kept going. Near Arlington, WA we stopped to get groceries for the next few days and fill up on gas. We kept heading north towards North Cascades National Park, checking for auto shops, but with no success.

Unfortunately with our late start and running around to try to fix the van noise, we didn’t get to the park until almost 4pm. The bad news at this point was that all the campgrounds within the park were full. Our first choice would have been to camp in Colonial Creek Campground, and I walked around just to check out the campsites and make sure ALL of the FCFS sites were really full for the night. They were. The campground was really amazing though, and I would love to come back and camp here. The creek runs right behind a lot of the campsites, and the lake is also right behind some of them. Would have been super cool to spend a few days there for sure.

Still, there was lots to see in the park even though we couldn’t camp there. We drove along Highway 20 through the park and the views were great. We stopped at Gorge Lake Overlook and did a short (less than a mile) hike around there to get views of the lake and the dam.

View of dam at Gorge Lake Overlook

Hiking around Gorge Lake Overlook

It was only a short drive from there to the Diablo Lake Overlook, and the views were definitely worth the drive.

Finally we drove down to the shores of Diablo Lake where some of the crazier kids in our bunch were looking forward to swimming in the frigid waters. Uncle Adam had challenged them to go up to their necks in the lake, and they were determined to follow through.

View from the shores of Diablo Lake

Lots of rocks for skipping! I couldn't believe the kids wanted to get in the cold water!

Joey was the first to go in up to his neck - brrrrrrr!

Lily was the only other one willing to do the challenge.

We still needed to find a place to sleep for the night, so we loaded back up into the van and drove out of North Cascades National park at about 6:30pm. Our plan for tomorrow was to drive to the Cascade Pass Trailhead and hike up to Cascade Pass, and that drive would have been about 1.5 hours from Colonial Creek Campground, so we decided to just head that way now so we would have less driving to do in the morning. Also, we had been told that there were a few Forest Service campgrounds along the way that may have openings. We stopped in the town of Marblemount and Joe tried once more to fix the van noise problem. He pulled all the dipsticks and everything looked fine, but he noticed that the power steering fluid reservoir was pretty empty. So we bought some and filled it up, and that totally fixed the weird noise problem. WHEW! I would have had no idea how to do any of that, so I’m glad he knows a thing or two and is good at problem solving.

There were two Forest Service campgrounds we were hoping would have room. They were both pretty rustic though - only vault toilets, and no potable water. So we filled up all of our water bottles before leaving Marblemount and headed for the mountains. The first campground was Marble Creek, and when we pulled in they told us it was already full for the night, and so was the other Forest Service campground. However, unlike in all the National Parks we have visited so far, the National Forests permit you to camp for free anywhere you can find a place to safely pull of the main road within the forest boundaries - it doesn’t have to be on a designated campsite. Even better, the lady in charge told us about a great spot just a little further on down the road that had its own private waterfall! We found the spot she described and pulled in at about 7:30pm. Good thing too, because shortly after another couple pulled over and asked if we were staying the night there - glad we got there first!

Our spot for the night in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest

Everyone was getting pretty hangry by this point because in our rush and worry about fixing the van and finding a spot to camp we hadn’t really eaten a proper dinner. We built another fire - which was a little challenging because everything was wet from a recent rainfall - and were looking forward to grilling some hot dogs. However, we sadly realized that nobody had actually put hot dogs into the cart at the grocery store earlier that afternoon. So we ended up having peanut butter and jelly bagels.

It was at this campsite that our emergency bucket with a toilet seat lid came in very handy. The boys had no problem using the woods for a bathroom, but for the girls it was a bit more challenging. At the beginning of the trip some of my kids thought the toilet bucket was “gross”, but now that we actually were using it, it suddenly became “a nice toilet bucket”. Haha!

Everyone had time to explore the waterfall, build the fire and sit around it for awhile, eat some food, and then get ready for sleeping in the van. We elected not to pitch a tent because, as I said earlier, everything was pretty wet from a recent rainfall, so we all tucked into the van once again. Mary on the front seat, Katy in the hammock, Lily on one bench, Joey on the floor, and Joe and I in the bed in the back. It was about 9:45pm when the last of us finally crawled into bed for the night.

Total miles traveled today: 202
Total miles travled on this trip: 3825