We decided to go visit one of the nearby national parks last weekend so that we could see it while the weather was still good. It takes almost three hours to get to the park from Seattle, so we left at 8:15 (which is very early for us on the weekend). There are a lot of trails there, so our first stop was the trailhead for Cascade Pass, which is away from the rest of the park, but it's the hike that we had read the most good things about.

To get there, we had to drive an hour on a narrow, unmarked road, and halfway along the road, the pavement ran out and turned to gravel. The parking lot was pretty full and it was surrounded by mountains and glaciers. Anyway, we started walking up the trail, which was surrounded by tall trees like most of the other hikes we've done. After about an hour, the trees started getting noticeably shorter and we started seeing more streams of water dripping down the mountain. After a little while, the trees basically disappeared and we were amidst a colorful meadow on the mountainside. After walking a little further, over some rocks, we made it to Cascade Pass. We stopped to enjoy the beautiful view, the cool, fresh air, the bright, warm sunshine, and the crunchy peanut butter sandwiches we brought with us. It took us almost 2 hours to get there and was probably the most difficult hike we had done. On the way back down, we had to stay focused do that we didn't lose our footing. At one point while we were walking, we heard an avalanche (from another nearby mountain - there was no snow on ours).

Anyway, after an hour and a half walking down, we got back to our car, then drove to another hour to get back to the main highway. We drove for another thirty minutes before we entered the main area of the park. We drove along the blue-green Skagit River and then past several dams on our way through the park. We stopped at several lookout points to observe Diablo Lake below, the trees ahead, and the mountains above. There were more trails available, but we didn't do any. Whereas many other national parks have a major point of interest that's not available outside of the park, this park contains just a sample of the beauty throughout the Pacific Northwest. Even without an entrance fee, 40-year-old North Cascades National Park wasn't as busy as Mount Rainier National Park, which we went to earlier in the summer. We had a great time there. Check out our pictures and video below.