Friday, August 15, 2008

We rode east to west across the North Cascades Highway, starting from Winthrop. We stopped at Washington Pass to take pictures. If you look closely at the shots I took of Liberty Bell Mountain you will see four climbers.

We stopped at a pullout between Washington Pass and Diablo Lake and took a couple of pictures of what I think is Crater Mountain.

We stopped at the overlook at Diablo Lake and snapped a couple more pictures, including a couple of the bikers we met at the cabin next to ours in Winthrop Thursday night.

I snapped a picture of the tunnel. We pulled over at the rest area near Marblemount, where Steve Casey and I had camped four years earlier.

We then rode south on Washington route 530 to Darrington, then continued west on 530 to Arlington. We got a bite to eat, then headed south on route 9 to Fobes Hill. We picked up route 2 southeasterly to route 203 at Monroe. We then rode 203 south to Preston. At Preston we took I-90 east one exit (we got on at exit 22 and got off at exit 25), passing along the north side of Nowak Park in the process. We took state route 18 southwest. It was choked at first, but opened up for awhile when it was called the Auburn-Echo Lake Cutoff. We went southwest on 167 to North Puyallup, then south and west on 512 to I-5. I-5 was a parking lot, so we went west to South Tacoma Way. We turned north, zigged and zagged westerly on Stellacoom Boulevard to Stellacoom. Then we turned south on Union Avenue, which became the Dupont Stellacoom Highway. That took us through Fort Lewis. We got on I-5 south at exit 119. We stopped at the rest area south of exit 95. We got off at exit 77 (Chehalis) and took route 6 west to Raymond. We turned south on US 101 and got a motel room at South Bend.