Pictures of mountains

All by myself.  What to do, what to do?  Well, I could do something productive, like, well anything else.

Instead, I chose to drive around one day and look at pretty mountains.  That wasn't all though.  It is morel season and I wanted to at least find a few.  So I thought about where I might have some luck.  I hear tell that you can find them frequently in recently burned areas.  So, here was my plan.  I was going to drive south near Everett and turn east on Highway 2.  This would take me over near Wenatchee, where I remember a lot of the fire activity happening last year.  It didn't hurt that this would take me past some beautiful mountains.  Up and out early...off I went.

Of course, it was super cloudy and you couldn't see most of the mountain.

It was cloudy and rainy and just not a real good day for epic scenery.  Oh well.


Then I passed a sign.

Well, yeah I'm gonna stop.  Waterfalls look cool even in the rain.  Besides, it was a short trail. 

Three feet out of the parking lot, it looked like this.

Good enough.  Let's investigate.

The trail ran back under the road to another section of falls.

But, this isn't just about waterfalls.  I was on a quest.  I needed to find some morels.  I saw some burned area a mile or so off the road.  Whenever I saw a chance to turn that direction, I did.

This looks like a good spot.

It was about five minutes of stomping around before I found one.

A chorus of angels sound

There were other little delights.

Cool looking orange fungus.

The real star of the show

 

 Oh yeah, Julia, your warnings didn't fall on deaf ears.  I didn't walk too close to this.

I spent about an hour farting around in the woods.  But, it had been a three hour drive to get here and I still wasn't sure which way I wanted to go home.  I got in the car made it to the main road.

Now...which way to go?  You know, there isn't anything keeping me from going out as long as I want.  Might as well do the loop.  The loop, in this case, would take me all the way to the east side of the Cascade range.  Then back north until I crossed back through the mountains through the North Cascades National Park.  Sounds fun right?

It took a lot longer than I thought.  I think I ended up with 9 hours or so of driving.  Sheesh.

Was it worth it?

The east side of the Cascades

In the mountains again.

Still pretty cold and snowy.

There were almost no cars out there either.  I could have danced the Watusi in the middle of the highway and no one would have known. 

I realized I could spend several days out here taking pictures, but I was still pretty far from home.  I managed to pass up a lot of photo opportunities.  There were one or two that I just couldn't resist.


I pulled into home well after dark.