After spending 2 days in Vancouver, it was time to say goodbye to Vancouver and Canada. We will be back in Canada soon but we’ll get back to it in the next post. For now, we will cross the land border between Canada and USA for the last time with our car and continue to head south. We picked a small border, more inland toward east to avoid the big border crossing between Vancouver and Seattle. The other reason for choosing this border was, our itinerary in the Washington state. Our first destination was Mount Baker area and North Cascade National park.
The border crossing was easy at Sumas, and as soon as we crossed into a peaceful quiet town, we felt the sense of relief for finally being away from big cities and highways again. The lush green mystic forest roads in Washington made us fall in love with it instantly. We had a great camp spot to relax and rest after two sleepless nights in Vancouver before heading to our first hiking trail of many that we planned in the area. We did the Big Four Ice caves track and really enjoyed it in Mount Baker National Forest. It felt so good to be back in the mainland USA. There’s something about its natural beauty that makes us feel at home. We feel it now more after being away in Canada and Alaska for over 2 months. Can not wait to explore what Sashington has to offer.
After spending few days in the area, we had a quick visit in a small town called Leavenworth, famous for its Bavarian style architecture and of course its German beer and sausage. Even though it was really touristic but it was a great change of scenery and we really loved the beer collection offered in this town. It followed with an another epic camp spot on top of a mountain close by.
The next few days were filled with epic drives through ancient forests and surreal camp sites, as we were heading toward Mount Rainier National park. Ascending to 14,410 feet above sea level, Mount Rainier stands as an icon in the Washington landscape. An active volcano, Mount Rainier is the most glaciated peak in the contiguous U.S.A. We were hoping that weather will be on our side when we get to the park proximity.
Most of the American National Parks are surrounded with national forests or state parks where are normally a great place to stay and camp close to national parks boundaries. We’ve arrived late in the day to the Mount Rainier national park. It was wet and visibility was poor. we decided to camp outside the park entrance and hope for the best for the next day. We found another amazing spot in the middle of the dense forest to camp. A magical place to spend a night!
The next morning, it was foggy and wet. Not an ideal situation to do the famous drive in the National park and visit Mount Rainier but we headed to entrance to try our luck. After getting to entrance, we realized that I forgot to check again if this park needs booked entry and it in fact needs a reservation for two famous drives, Sunrise Corridor and Paradise corridor. We did the first one the day before late in the afternoon in a dense fog and didn’t have any issue so I didn’t even think of it but the reserved entry is for morning and afternoons so it you enter late (after 3:00 pm or 5:00 pm) it’s open. But it was early in the morning and it was also weekend so we couldn’t negotiate our entry. The weather wasn’t great too and we just realized that it is not the day for us to see mount Rainier. We knew that we will be back in the area in few weeks and we can leave Mount Rainier for later. We found a great trail with an epic waterfall to explore just outside the entrance and enjoyed it before heading west.
The trail was beautiful with an amazing waterfall at the end of it. After spending sometime around the waterfall and picking some new berries, we were ready to leave Mount Rainier area for now and head toward the famous Olympic park in Olympic peninsula in Washington. We had some work to do and pretty much had rainy days everyday in the last week so we were looking for a quiet sunny spot to camp for few days. And after spending some time trying few locations we finally found the one!
We’ve spent few days next to a crystal clear lake and were lucky with the weather. Relaxed and well fed, we focused on few jobs that we had to do before heading deeper in the Olympic peninsula to explore the Olympic National Park. It will be for the next post, till then take care and enjoy life.
Michael Chernishov
March 27, 2025 at 4:26amWow! So beautiful! Thanks for sharing guys!