OK I found out the name of the other cool trail in the North Cascades; it’s the Hidden Lake trail. It was the most beautiful little body of water I’d ever seen.
On the Stetattle Creek trail I saw my first American Dipper and a Steller’s Jay. Those birds don’t exist here in NC.
Fair warning: These hikes aren’t very long but they also aren’t really easy.
@Rex said:
OK I found out the name of the other cool trail in the North Cascades; it’s the Hidden Lake trail.
Thanks. It gets very good reviews by others as well it seems.
When we visited Mt St Helens we were astounded. Granted it was about three years after the volcano exploded. We entered from the north.
I was last in Kamloops two years ago… Weird desert environment in stark contrast to the BC coast.
@kayamedic said:
When we visited Mt St Helens we were astounded. Granted it was about three years after the volcano exploded. We entered from the north.I was last in Kamloops two years ago… Weird desert environment in stark contrast to the BC coast.
We’re planning to see Mount St Helens on the way back. I don’t know when the satellite imagery on Google maps is from but definitely still evidence of the fairly recent event.
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I’ll be leaving early tomorrow morning.
@willowleaf said:
The last time I was in Vancouver I was on my own but wanted to kayak. I drove out to Deep Cove, only about 30 minutes northeast of downtown, and signed up for a group day paddle with Deep Cove Outfitters.
I’ll keep this in mind. My father has suggested kayaking a few times because of my interest. Unfortunately he has close to zero experience and skill in a kayak. If there’s any paddling on this trip it will more likely be canoeing on a calm interior lake or myself with a group as you did.
I would definitely recommend taking a detour off of I-5 to Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands and then take the ferry to Port Townsend from Keystone. Drive on down to Olympia, but stop at the Little Creek Casino right off the highway (near Shelton) and have their buffet if you love oysters.
Jump back onto I-5 and drive on down to Kelso WA. To visit Mt. St. Helens, you have to turn off at Castle Rock. There is no good way to avoid coming back to I-5 at Castle Rock. There are forestry roads, but I wouldn’t recommend them.
At Kelso, cross the Columbia River to Rainier and take highway 30 to Portland. You will come to the Next Adventure Kayak store at Scappoose Bay, but you have to turn off 30 just south of St. Helens, Or.
Continue on to Portland if you must, but don’t get there at rush hours–which is most of the day. You can by-pass some of Portland by taking 26 back to Beaverton and then take 217 back to I-5 south of Portland. Or you could turn off at Tigard and head for Lincoln City on the coast.
Indian Arm is a pretty sheltered fjord and there was at least one beginner in the group I paddled with. Conditions were calm the day we were out and other than the usual brief light rain shower that seems to pass through most days in that part of the world, we had a relaxed paddle. The little town of Deep Cove and the park at the harbor side marina where the outfitter launches is a place where your dad might be happy to just hang out ashore while you did a half day outing. They might also have tandems. They also rent SUP’s (of course, those seem to be overtaking, if not completely displacing, kayaks at most rental liveries any more).
Other Vancouver sites that I liked were the University of BC Anthropology Museum and the Capilano Suspension Bridge in North Vancouver, which has elevated trails through giant trees and displays and demonstrations of First Nations crafts. It is rather touristy, but I really enjoyed hanging out and talking about boats with several master carvers from the Haida nation who were making a dugout canoe.
I was there this same time of year each time I went – mid September seems to be the perfect time for a visit to the Pacific Northwest, mild weather and much fewer crowds.
By the way, if you are tempted to make the hike out to Cape Flattery on the NW tip of the Olympic National Park while passing through, do NOT walk on the big tree slab slices that they have laid for the path to the overlook. This is a rain forest, after all, and they are slick and slimy. On my last trip out there we were taking that hike and just as it started to occur to me that maybe there wood be firmer footing off the slabs, both feet went out from under me and I landed on my side with my upper arm hitting a rock concealed under the pine needles. Broke my proximal humerus right under the shoulder – second day of a trip where we planned to hike, kayak and bike in Washington state and on Vancouver Island. I did manage to hike for the next 10 days with the arm in a sling but the other activities were out of the question.
I can, however, highly recommend the excellent. efficient and affordable Canadian health care system and am glad I waited until we got to Victoria the next day to get x-rays. The boyfriend I was with was an ER doc – he insisted it was broken but I was in denial until the x-rays proved his point. Even though I was not a Canadian citizen, they treated and billed me – total of $217 for two doctor exams, a nice immobilizing sling and a full set of films (even gave us electronic files of the scans so my MD beau could look at them on his laptop). Total time for all services as a walk-in to a public clinic in a mall 6 blocks from our hotel was less than 90 minutes. (my insurer did reimburse me). When I came back to the states and had the same evals done by my US health care system (to make sure the break had not displaced during the trip) it took me 48 hours to get an orthopod appointment and then 4.5 hours to be seen and get x-rays. And they billed my insurer over $1400, which is 7 times what Canadian health care costs.
Do go out on any clear night before the moon is up when you are in the mountains of BC or Washington state and look at the sky. There are so many stars visible that they almost obscure the Milky Way.
@willowleaf said:
The little town of Deep Cove and the park at the harbor side marina where the outfitter launches is a place where your dad might be happy to just hang out ashore while you did a half day outing.
Yes, he’s said he’d be happy to do this too. I’ll have to see whether I really want to paddle when I’m there. I have a strong preference for my own equipment rather than some unknown rental stuff. Unless something really unforeseen happens, I will be returning before too long.
Other Vancouver sites … the Capilano Suspension Bridge in North Vancouver, which has elevated trails through giant trees and displays and demonstrations of First Nations crafts.
Sounds neat.
By the way, if you are tempted to make the hike out to Cape Flattery on the NW tip of the Olympic National Park while passing through, do NOT walk on the big tree slab slices
“Don’t break arm” – Duly noted. 
I’ll do my best to comply.
I can, however, highly recommend the excellent. efficient and affordable Canadian health care system
A lot of people complain about the Canadian healthcare system, and no doubt there are things to complain about. But I don’t think I’d trade it for the US system.
@magooch said:
I would definitely recommend taking a detour off of I-5 to Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands and then take the ferry to Port Townsend from Keystone. Drive on down to Olympia, but stop at the Little Creek Casino right off the highway (near Shelton) and have their buffet if you love oysters.Jump back onto I-5 and drive on down to Kelso WA. To visit Mt. St. Helens, you have to turn off at Castle Rock. There is no good way to avoid coming back to I-5 at Castle Rock. There are forestry roads, but I wouldn’t recommend them.
At Kelso, cross the Columbia River to Rainier and take highway 30 to Portland. You will come to the Next Adventure Kayak store at Scappoose Bay, but you have to turn off 30 just south of St. Helens, Or.
Continue on to Portland if you must, but don’t get there at rush hours–which is most of the day. You can by-pass some of Portland by taking 26 back to Beaverton and then take 217 back to I-5 south of Portland. Or you could turn off at Tigard and head for Lincoln City on the coast.
Thanks for the tips. Do you (or anyone else) know what I should expect for the cost of ferries, generally speaking? How much needs to be planned ahead for this? What about toll roads? These are things I’m not at all familiar with, as they aren’t common in SW Ontario.
There are no toll roads in Washington, or Oregon. In California there might still be a toll on a couple of bridges in the Bay Area.
I just looked up the ferry from Whidbey to Port Townsend and it looks like the cost depends on length of vehicle and number of passengers. There are some discounts for various things, but it looks like it should be somewhere around $25–$30.
We took a number of ferry crossings between the mainland and Vancouver Island during the trip out there in 2012. We booked them in advance on line since we had the rental car and wanted to be sure we had a confirmed space to keep to our itinerary. I thought the prices were quite reasonable compared to what I have paid in other places. And as it turned out, none of the ferries were heavily booked and we probably could have just driven up and booked the days and times we wanted to go.
By the way, the ferry ride from Sidney, north of Victoria on Vancouver Island, to Anacortes, WA, winds through the San Juan Islands and is really a lovely and scenic trip. We were lucky to do the crossing on a sunny day when the straits were like glass. Saw many kayakers touring between the islands.
I loved Victoria – the botanical gardens and natural history museum and the beaches with mountains in the background. Vancouver Island is called the “Florida of Canada” for good reason. The climate is very Mediterranean and the gardens are full of tropical plants you would not expect to see so far north. Lovely city to walk around, very European. I regret that we couldn’t bike the Galloping Goose trail there nor get up to Strathcona Provincial Park in the middle of the island for hiking – those will have to wait for another trip (and finding another travel buddy who was as game for such outings as the ex was.)
@Sparky961 said:
Thanks for the tips. Do you (or anyone else) know what I should expect for the cost of ferries, generally speaking? How much needs to be planned ahead for this? What about toll roads? These are things I’m not at all familiar with, as they aren’t common in SW Ontario.
As I posted above, the Port Townsend-Coupeville ferry crossings are subject to cancellation during extreme low tides. As of 2016, reservations were not required for that particular crossing (unlike some other crossings), but if you have a car they are highly recommended. Sometimes people had to spend an unplanned night in town because they could not get on the last crossing. Rules might have changed since then, so check the WA State Ferry webpage.
You can take the Black Ball ferry (not a WA state ferry) between Victoria and Port Angeles, which lies about 50 miles west of Port Townsend. If you are in PA, definitely visit Olympic National Park. Wild rock cliffs and long beaches on the western end of it, rainforest in the middle portion, and high peaks in the eastern portion. Hurricane Ridge can be driven a long way up, and then it is only a short hike to even better views.
For someone who’s never been in the mountains, I have to say that the drive from Mission, BC to Kelowna, BC has been pretty amazing. I expect it to get better still.
Shame that there is no paddling planned… The Bowron Lakes are majestic… Imagine a narrow lake instead of asphalt in this scene
If you are gobsmacked by mountains (I am too) hope you can arrange a future drive down the Icefields Parkway, farther east from your itinerary this time, for a mind-blowing tour. The first time I drove it, I averaged about 10 mph across its length because I found I had to pull over and take photos around every bend for the next vista of an even more splendid turquoise blue lake backed by glaciers tumbling from majestic peaks than the one I had just passed.
My friend Barbara went hiking out there last month – one of her shots of 11,453’ Mount Athabasca below. The Icefields Parkway runs through the valley below between them and the mountains – the col on the right is the edge of the massive Columbia Icefield from which 3 major continental drainages arise. Athabasca is a popular mountaineering peak for day climbs. I climbed it in 1975 and again in 1988 – the snowpack and glaciers used to come farther down the mountains so climate change is pretty obvious there.
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The Icefields Parkway is a stunning testament to climate change. I traveled it first in 1967. 50 years later the trip was still scenic but poignant… Retreating glaciers… Soon to be gone.And way too many tourists… The Columbia Icefield used to come to the highway… Now you get bussed to a dirty puddle of rotting ice
Salmon Glacier is suffering the same changes
Glacier National Park (the US one in Montana) has lost virtually all of its namesakes in the past 30 years. When I backpacked there in 1975 they were still sending park trail workers up some of the routes to shovel paths across the remote snowfields once a week. No longer necessary, sad to say.
Though I have to admit it was kind of amusing to be trekking 12 miles from the nearest road in the mountains and have a guy jog by you with a shovel and clear a path just ahead before jogging back. So much for feeling like you were “roughing it”!
We were in Glacier NP (Canadian one) today. All our stops are to be relatively short but we spent about 3 hours going up the “Great Glacier” trail. More later.
