We stayed one night in Winthrop, an early 20th century mining town that tries to keep the flavor of an earlier time. It’s well preserved, artsy, but a bit kitchy.  There’s a good bookstore. We took a nice hike along the Methow River on a conservancy-run trail and explored the outskirts of town.  We drove up to the Sun Valley Lodge and checked it out. The views there are stunning but reviews are mixed for this popular resort destination. We left in the morning and headed west on Route 20, the major road through the Northern Cascades. The scenery became greener and lush. We stopped on the road to take a hike to Rainy Lake, being careful not to raise the interest of the mountain goats who are in rutting season..but we sure saw a lot of goat poop on the trails.

Rainy Lake

That afternoon we picked up some decent Que Car BBQ. Afterwards we checked into the Howard Miller Steelhead State Park Campgrounds in Rockport on the Skagit River. This is one of the nicest campgrounds we have stayed at to date. Many of the people camping here were fishing on the river and catching large Humpy (Pink) salmon, exhausted from swimming upstream to spawn and die.

That night Apollo walked into a bar, again (sigh, it’s becoming a habit) where he made friends with some of the local patrons and a few other dogs. A couple of guys were buying Rainier Beer memorabilia from the bartender. (Think Rhinegold Girl posters.)

The next morning Joanne insisted on doing laundry and prevailed over Mitch’s protestations (dirtbag!). The closest laundromat was in Concrete, a town that gets its name for the local manufacturing of that product, now discontinued.

Most of the Main St. buildings in town are concrete, built after a fire destroyed many of the wooden structures. Concrete was heralded as fireproof and the town took on that persona, often painting murals on the otherwise bland concrete walls. A candidate runnning for Mayor, proclaims “Concrete, we can be more.” Mitch took advantage of this downtime to repair some damage he had done to the plastic bumper guard on the RT. More good use for duct tape. Locals stopped to give him advice.

Concrete Police Department

Old Cement Mixer, Putty Putty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb2XEA5xkyc

Later that day we hiked along the banks of Baker Lake to the foothills of spectacularly snow covered Mount Baker.  Apollo got in a swim and doggie playtime.