Today I am leaving Seattle and traveling to Washington wine country via the Mountain to Sound Greenway. My travels will take me across Interstate 90, over Snoqualmie Pass to the ” other” Washington. The drive is simply wonderful. As you speed out of Seattle, the water of the sound firmly behind you see the Cascade Mountains looming in the distance. Interstate 90 travels up through the dense evergreens. Suddenly you are at the top, traveling over the pass. This is actually a place for the outdoor enthusiast (someone I am NOT). Here, high in the Cascades you can ski or hike…depending on the season. Usually I stop at the summit for a quick bowl of steaming hot soup and just enjoy the crisp, clean air. As you travel over the summit, you pass a large mountain top lake. The lake, like the summit changes with the seasons, sometimes dark and shrouded in mist, other times frozen and snow covered, but often clear and clean, reflecting the bright blue sky. It feels lonely up here, but there is incredible beauty in that loneliness…no matter what the time of year. I could write about the beauty of the snowcapped Cascades endlessly, but now we are on to the Eastern slope of the Cascades.
Here we enter the “other” Washington. Travel writers and tv shows project the endless beauty of Western Washington, the evergreen part of the Evergreen State. If you stay west of the Cascades you will miss the diverse beauty this unique state offers. From Interstate 90 I turn south and east on Interstate 82, traveling through a different Washington. Here the evergreens give way to rolling golden foothills and scrub brush. This area is as golden as the mountains are green! A trip down this road reminds me of traveling on Interstate 17 from Phoenix to Flagstaff. Although this is not high desert, it sure looks like it! This is big sky country, blue and beautiful, seldom troubled by rain clouds. As you wind down into the Yakima Valley, you are surprised by a large snow covered peak in the distance directly in front of you, and another, imposing snow covered mountain to your right. WSDOT has posted helpful signs so you can appreciate the view. Before you is Mount Adams and to the right is Mt. Rainier (much more about this peak in later blogs). Tomorrow we will explore the Yakima Valley. Join me as I travel Inn Washington.
