After a delightful breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes (my favorite!), we packed up camp and headed out to continue down the WA Backcountry Discovery Route.  Right off the main road we stopped for a quick hike at a waterfall. Don’t remember the name of it.  I really need to start taking notes on trips like this!

Our next “destination” was Bethel Ridge.  Jason had always seen photos taken of trucks and bikes seemingly perched precariously on the edge of a cliff and he wanted to be there too. So away we went.  It was pretty slow going.  The road was riddled with potholes, which were handled rather poorly by the bone stock suspension on our fullsize truck.  Jason was having a ball.  I was getting the shit beat out of me by the truck. Fun times.  Eventually it turned into a real trail, which was a lot nicer to drive on, except it also got tighter, which resulted in extensive pinstriping of the paint.  Next time i’ll spray her with Pam so the leaves glide off easier. Also she’ll smell like butter. Which is cool.

We took a wrong road (Jason made me navigator. Bad idea.) and ended up on top of a mountain with a giant cell tower station on it. cool!

There were also tons of these gorgeous pink flowers. Hardy little things to grow up here.

I should have gotten out of the truck and taken more “gnarly extreme action adventure shots” of the truck actually offroading. but I didn’t. tough shit. Eventually we made it to the top of Bethel Ridge which was really freaking cool. Great views of the mountains and a few pretty sick shots of the truck perched, as advertised, on the edge of a cliff. NICE!

The road back down from Bethel was a little intense for me. I’m not a total pansy, I just didn’t want to tear up our nice truck. I suppose I’ll get over it. Woulda had fun on a motorcycle though. Went through the small town of Naches where the temps were 101. We didn’t stop and get out. The truck has AC. 😉  Anyhoo, by this point I was a little sick of just sitting in the truck, so we bypassed Umptanum Ridge and took the more major dirt trails (HA!).  Ended up trying randomly to find a cool place at elevation to camp so it might be comfortable enough to sleep.  Our final spot was at the top of Manastash Ridge overlooking the town of Ellensburg.  (No idea how we ended up up there)  The views weren’t too shabby.