After Olympic, we headed up to North Cascades National Park on the Canadian border. The most striking part about this park is the colorful Diablo Lake. An explanation of this surprising color is in one of the photos. Sadie and I took a hike that also overlooked Diablo Lake. I happened on what I thought was a particularly beautiful roadside cascade one day, too. The usual PNW moss, ferns, and wet was everywhere. Beautiful area.
Next, we headed out of Oregon and into Washington. One thing that has come out of traveling full-time is that I am being educated geographically regarding the western side of the country. For example, I didn’t know Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, are basically the same metropolitan area, separated by the Columbia River. Although it was interesting to discover this, as usual these days, I am quite happy to leave big cities in the rear-view mirror.
Olympic National Park was probably the biggest surprise for me to this point, as far as national parks are concerned. I found it to be the most diverse of all the ones I’ve visited – from beaches with amazing low-tide creatures to towering snow-capped mountains.
My next destination was one of my bucket-list parks, Yosemite NP. When I first arrived, it was early in the day, so I went in the south gate, got some information, and looked around at the Pioneer Yosemite History Center. I found out from the visitor center employees that I could drop my trailer at the Wawona hotel overflow parking lot whenever I made the long drive to the valley. This was extremely helpful as I did not feel my trailer would be secure where I was camping outside the south entrance. I really appreciated that.
At first, I dispersed-camped outside the south gate. ‘Had a scary experience with some aggressive locals so I later moved to another spot in the national forest. I kept trying to get a reservation down in the valley and, after a while, finally snagged one for a couple nights. (In this case, some spots had opened up because of receding flood waters!)
The first time I headed to the valley, what was supposed to be a one-hour trip turned into two because they were doing tree-work along the road. That’s a tough job for the workers with all the traffic.
The valley was just stunning. There’s a one-way perimeter road through the valley to accommodate all the humanity. I found parking pretty easily despite all the people. It was amazing to be in a place I had wanted to see my whole life.
My Side of the Adventure 