Highway 2 to Leavenworth

Today I got in the car and drove out east over the mountains. I have not been exploring nearly enough since I moved to the mainland. I have a car for christsake.

I wandered my way through the suburbs and exurbs towards highway 2, which runs from Monroe through Gold Bar and past Skykomish up to Stevens Pass, then down to Leavenworth.

It was a beautiful drive, and so much better than I-90. As I wound up towards the pass the road came up into the clouds. There were few cars at that point (after a ridiculous traffic jam in Sultan) and it was gorgeous and dreamlike.

I stopped many times while driving to get out and take a look at the scenery. I feel like I've been in Washington long enough that I must have seen it all already or some stupid idea like that, but there are so many places I haven't been, or that I need to return to.

After I went over the pass I stopped and climbed down to a little grassy spot in the pines and sat and sketched and ate my sandwich.

I need to go on hikes, go camping, go on picnics, go to hot springs. I need to plan these things myself. I need to invite people far enough in advance to that we can plan something together that can work. I need to get a tent.

I am often surprised by how wonderful May is. I spend the winter thinking about high summer, bike rides, and jumping in the sound, and fruit, and late sunsets. May this year is warm, but the plants and trees are still lush and verdant. May also means the days are still getting longer, that summer is yet to come. There is something (for me) melancholy about the way that once summer begins, the days are already getting shorter, and the shortening just accelerates the closer you get to fall. Then it all falls apart at once..
But in May, you can ride your bike, you can sail, you can sit in the greenery by the water and read your book and the days just keep getting longer.

The rest of the drive towards Leavenworth was goregous. The town itself was strange, but it does look like downtown core may have adopted some of the European culture of dense, walkable streets and 2/3 storey mixed use buildings.

I then took the 97 towards Cle Elum, which wound back up again through the Wenatchee NF, but I turned towards Ellensburg when the road split so that I could get out of the forest into the open country. I got out of the car at the top of a big hill overlooking the plain. There were enormous wind turbines, which sounded like distant airplanes at the top and on other hills to the south. The overcast clouds of the Puget Sound seemed to have been agitated by their passage over the mountains, and now both sun and showers unfolded over the plain.

I turned onto state highway 10 headed towards Cle Elum again. This was a quite two-lane blacktop winding along the Yakima River and the railroad tracks and irrigation canals that flank it. The highway ran parallel to the interstate and was so much lovelier. The sun was starting to go down in the west and was still peaking through clouds.

At Cle Elum I got on I-90 to power over the pass and back to the City, arriving just as it got dark. 280 miles logged for the day.