After a couple weeks in Seattle, we decided we would rent a car and drive the Cascade Loop around Washington State. I remember trying quite successfully to miserably tire my sister out. Anyways, we started with a couple nights down at Mt Rainier (technically not on the loop), and then circled back up to drive through the mountains.

I don’t necessarily remember where and when these pictures were taken, so I’m just going to do the best with the commentary throughout.

See the coffee cup in my hand? We thought we would just go check out this one bridge, but then decided to keep walking up to comet falls, which we did, but then we decided to just keep going to the top, which we did again. There’s nowhere to throw things out along the way, so I just carried my coffee cup for like 4 hours of hiking.

When you get close, it’s kind of misty. Because it’s a waterfall.

By the way, these are all pictures my sister took. I don’t take artsy stuff like this.

I think this was from the top of that unplanned, extended hike we took.  “Accidental hikes” as I liked to call them.  It was probably my favorite few of things.  It was also kind of funny because I’m just walking up this mountain with my coffee cup and there are people dressed in their hiking gear with polls and whatnot.  Shrug.  I wasn’t carrying a backpack or anything.

We couldn’t find a campground so we pulled off the road in one of the public areas and set up shop.  Not so bad.  Here’s a cool picture of me smoking a cigar and reading a book by the river/sunset.  Not pictured: PBR.

Ok this skips way forward to the end when I was walking on the beach a Discovery Park just North of Seattle, but whatever.

I think this was on one of those several mile hikes we took.  There is stuff like this all over the place because of the mountains and the raining.

Scenic overlook.  We just had to pull over for this one (the entire loop is a nice drive full of views).

This is a lake and Mount Rainer (I think).  There were a lot of tiny fish jumping around.

Another hike photo.

Oh wait, maybe this was the view from that long accidental hike.  I think it is.  Because it looks a little obstructed in the photo but it’s really nice being up on top of the mountain looking down on things, including other mountains.

Ok, you get it, it’s a snowy mountain.

There’s me looking at the snowy mountain.

Leavenworth is a small Bavarian town located on the East side of the mountains.  Great little Mexican restaurant there.  And a Starbucks! But “Starbucks” was written in Bavarian typeface.

Lake Stuart was a short drive from Leavenworth, but that short drive was all on horrible gravel.  We waned to go on some other trail but ended up on his one, which was actually a pretty easy hike compared to what we were prepared for.  Still, it was nice, and the lake was pretty.

I think this is also Lake Stuart.

Ok 3 this is just excessive.

Diablo Lake is great because you just have to pull over on the highway to see it and there is a cute forest range to tell you why it’s green.  I don’t remember why it’s green.

I initially thought this was 4th of July in Coupeville, but I might be wrong.  There is a lot of water around here, and the sun sets nearly every day.

Pretty sure this goes back to where we camped near Mt Rainier.  I really need to order these posts.

Yeah it’s definitely that campsite.  I was just smoking a cigar and reading a book here.

This was a hike we did in the North Cascades.  Surprise, it’s a hike to a lake on a mountain.

What isn’t covered in our pictures was hanging out with an interesting family for a different night we couldn’t find a place to camp.  Ended up staying in a place where we got to see a couple rattlesnakes, but we didn’t die, so that was nice.

There also aren’t pictures of our Lake Chelon trip.  We took a ferry up and down it for a day, which was lovely, saw some forest fires, and another set of waterfalls.

What else.  We drove back on Whidbey Island, which is where we had stayed on the 4th of July and saw some fireworks.  We had to take our car on a ferry to get back over to Seattle, where we stayed one more night before taking the ferry up to Vancouver.