Route 20 across Washington is one I had heard about for years as being a beautiful drive through the mountains, so I was excited to be able to finally drive across it. When we left the National Bison Range in Montana we drove by a nice river for quite some distance before hitting the interstate and then driving across the northern point of Idaho (first time for any of us to be in Idaho) through Coeur d’Alene and then into Spokane, WA. Very beautiful country.
I had wanted to stop at the Spokane Falls. There’s a park there and I had hoped we could see the falls and hangout for a little while, but it didn’t end up working out for us to stop. We decided to at least drive through and see the falls from the truck. Bad choice. It turned out that you really can’t see the falls from the road and it made the drive through Spokane take forever since you’re going through all the city streets and stop lights…..trust me, most of them are not go lights! It took so long that we just HAD to stop at Sonic for a drink. This as it turned out was rather tricky with the big rig. The park by the falls looked pretty neat with a huge red wagon play area that the kids would have liked…..maybe another time.
From Spokane we drove north to Kettle Falls, WA and took highway 20 all the way across Washington. It is a pretty drive that winds it’s way through the mountains. The trees are thick though, so there aren’t too many panoramic views and wasn’t quite as spectacular as I had envisioned. Of course it could be that we drove it on the heels of visiting Glacier NP which as mentioned in previous posts is simply stunning. It was still a pleasant drive and was a great way to make our way across the state of Washington. The first section after Kettle Falls goes through the Sherman Pass Scenic Byway. We made our way to Omak for the night and boondocked at the Walmart there. This is the last good place to stay overnight before getting into the Cascade mountains and we were very glad we had stopped there.
The next day we drove from Omak to Seattle. The highlights of this route are the old German town of Winthrop on the east side of the Cascades and the Cascade National Park and mountains themselves. Winthrop was an unexpected find. In looking online at some potential things to do in Washington state, Charity happened across some information about Sheri’s Sweet Shoppe in Winthrop. It’s apparently this well known place that serves some of the best cinnamon rolls and homemade ice cream anywhere. We were definitely stopping there! It’s the last town before going up in the mountains when traveling east to west and they had adequate public parking for RV travelers. It’s a great old style town that has lots of shopping and dining locales. The kids enjoyed watching a glass blower make a vase at the local glass shop and we thoroughly enjoyed our time at Sheri’s! We ended up spending a couple of hours here before driving on across the Cascades.
Here are some shots from Winthrop:
North Cascades National Park was different than some of the other national parks I’ve been too. It is designed to be visited from west to east. As such there isn’t the typical welcome to the national park sign when coming from the east side. As a result we weren’t sure we were even in the national park for much of the time. Fortunately I had done a ton of research about the area and also had downloaded the map of the area in the phone app I use for GPS tracking while backpacking, so we really had no trouble, but absent the research and phone app we may not have been so fortunate. We made stops at the Washington Pass Observation Site (the kids and I enjoyed the rock scrambling in the area and the views were good too), Diablo Lake Vista Point (a beautiful blue/green other worldly colored lake), and the park visitor center south of Newhalem. We made it just before they closed:-). Here’s some pictures from our drive across the Cascades:
Washington Pass Overlook
Diablo Lake Vista Point
National Park Visitor Center
