The Gorge waterfall in the park
We departed Grand Coulee RV park at a leisurely 9:30am and headed North West. The first half of the drive took us through high plains that wasn’t too interesting. Gradually the terrain changed to apple orchards. The road followed the Columbia river for a good part of the drive. The terrain gradually changed to mountain foothills and intermittent forests as we pulled through Winthrop. The town of Winthrop looked really cool. The main street looks like an old west town and is lined with cool shops and restaurants. As we passed main street we came to a huge RV parking lot so we pulled in. We had a burger at the Duck Brand Hotel and Resaurant. Food was great and the meal was super pleasant and relaxing on the outside porch in perfect weather. The restaurant was pet friendly so Maverick made friends all around. After our lunch we walked both side of the main street. I checked out three really nice outdoor supply stores and Donna checked out a few general merchandise stores. If you get a chance it is worth a stop. We had originally planned on stopping here for the night but didn’t expect to find anything to see here. It would have been a nice and scenic stop.
After our several hour diversion we headed out of town and drove through the North Cascades National Park. This section of of SR-20 is one of the more beautiful drives we’ve ever driven. The views with lakes, rivers, and mountain ranges are breathtaking. If at all possible drive this road. The drive does have up to 8% grades and the coach handled them well. We pulled off at many of the overlooks to take in the views. Eventually we drove out of the park and soon found our Alpine RV Park in the town of Marblemount. The park was ok and very affordable. We got the only remaining 50A site and found this particular site had a bizarre hook up arrangement. The sewer was far left of the electric and water leaving no way I could figure out to hook up everything at once. I chose to put the sewer on the passenger side where I could NOT hook it up and then use the 50A and the water. Pretty weird. All of the other sites I saw had normal hook ups so this was unique to this site. The park manger was super nice.
After getting setup we took off in the Jeep back into the park. We saw a nice waterfall we wanted to check out that didn’t have RV parking. We stopped by the park visitor center as usual then headed on to Light City inside the park. This small village is mainly for park personnel and the nearby dam utilities. There was a nice Trail of the Cedars with a bridge over the river. Maverick enjoyed running around the trail and cooling his paws in the river. Next we headed to the Gorge to see that waterfall. We weren’t disappointed. There is a deep narrow gorge running down to the lake. The waterfalls starts really high and falls through many steps underneath the road bridge. There was also a nice paved trail. We all enjoyed a nice cool hike of about 0.5 miles with nice views of the Gorge, the lake, and the dam. Despite the short time we felt we had really seen a lot of the National Park between the drive in and the afternoon exploring.