Woke up at the usual time in the morning after a fantastic night’s sleep. Wandered around the inn a bit until Jason came downstairs. There is a hike a little bit out of Twisp to a series of beaver dams they use to raise young salmon to release into the river. Really nice relaxing hike before breakfast.
We considered sticking around for the annual small-town-usa 4th of july parade in Twisp because it sounded super cute. In the end, Winthrop won out so we reluctantly hit the road again. Winthrop, like Leavenworth, is a town that’s made its living on being a super cute tourist trap. It’s worth visiting, but I’m not sure I’d spend the week out here. One thing we thought would be cheesy was the Shafer museum, which is pretty much a collection of all the old stuff from Winthrop. We’d seen old mining gear before, but this was actually a truly fantastic collection of old buildings, mining stuff, tractors, etc. Apparently the people of the town decided that all their old stuff would make a better display all together instead of shoved in their attics. We must have spent a good 3 hours here.
Jason and I don’t really appreciate fireworks and appreciate even less the drunken shitstorm that usually surrounds the 4th of July. We wanted to spend the 4th as far away from other humans as possible so we headed towards the mountains and the Cascade Highway.
We started getting antsy in the car so we stopped and hiked Blue Lake.
We’re depressingly out of hiking shape, so we both found it a little more difficult than the “cute little easy day hike” it was advertised as it Winthrop. Living at sea level doesn’t help either. The view of the clear mountain lake made it all worthwhile though. Amazing!
At the trailhead there was a warning sign about mountain goats. Neither of us read it and we should have. There were 2 goats that followed us all the way down one side of the lake and across to the other side where we hid behind a rock until they walked away. Scary stuff. I don’t like goats anyway… let alone goats with giant horns that stalk me!
They were a lot closer, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself with my crazy loud camera shutter. At least the DSLR would have made a good self defense weapon. Needless to say the trip back down the trail was a lot more “enthusiastic” than the trip up and we got back to the car (alive) and ready to find a campsite and make some dinner!
Still had a lot of open spots but there were no RV hookups and wasn’t very kid friendly. Perfect. Really a nice campground. Large area behind each parking spot for a few tents, firepit, and a table. We made hawaiian chicken kabobs and marshmallows.
Slept awesome and didn’t hear a single firework! 🙂