Thursday, August 13, 2015

Hot?

As we headed inland, I assumed we would be gaining elevation through the Cascade Mountains.  Although this will be true down the road, the first part of our trip has been through the Skagit Valley.  Weather.com has been predicting a heat wave with temperatures in the high 90’s which made me think we needed hookups to run the air.  However, the best laid plans of mice and men . . ., and all that.  Anticipating hookups, we confidently arrived at Howard Miller Steelhead Park in Rockport on a Monday to discover that the whole park had been rented out for the week! 

A bit apprehensively, we followed a nice young man’s suggestion and detoured 6 miles south to another Skagit County primitive park overlooking the Sauk River.  If we couldn’t have AC, we would just hunker down in the trees.  We found the biggest pull-through site we’ve ever seen.  

See our rig barely visible in the distance?  That’s not the road, but our site, and there’s about 50 more feet of it behind the rig.  Is it any wonder that people keep driving in thinking it's empty?

For some reason, this fern outside our dinette window caught my eye.

The Skagit River is a pretty gray-green color due to glacial silt in the water.

Oh, another view of Mt. Baker!

The town of Concrete was so named because of the cement companies that operated there in the early 1900s.

It’s now a small town of 900 residents with this sweet little church.

The concrete bridge is listed on the Washington State and National Historic Registers.  When completed in 1918, it was the longest single span concrete bridge in the world.  Also, it’s very attractive.

We stopped at Sauk Mountain Pottery and spent an interesting ½ hour talking to the owner.  He built his artistic house from the ground up.

I didn’t buy anything, but I was very tempted.  His pottery is beautiful, unique, and reasonably priced.  I just can’t get over my inbred cheapness and excessive practicality.

We also stopped at the birthplace of my favorite cereal.  I was expecting to see a production facility, but was told that General Mills bought them out years ago and now it comes out of Minnesota.

As for the heat scare, that's all it was.  The first day it got up to the mid 80s and the next it didn’t even reach 80!  It was gorgeous at our woodland site.


5 comments:

  1. The pottery looks very sturdy and pouring from the teapot full of water would be good weight training .

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  2. I saw on the news that there will be record breaking heat in that area, so glad it was a false alarm. Another great camp!!

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  3. Hope you didn't have any trouble "squeezing" into that campsite... :c)

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  4. Great looking pottery. I loved making the stuff and now have a house where I can use it and don't have to pack it for travel. Sometimes beauty outweighs practicality.

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  5. Wow! that's quite the site you found there. You found plenty of interesting places to visit. I find it easier not to be tempted to buy things now that we don't have a stix and brix.

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