Washington state is an incredible adventure, as we have been discovering these past two years. There's something for everyone with a variety of landscapes including: a rocky coast, ginormous mountains, expansive fields, and forests with trees as big as houses. We've been trying our best to see all the corners of this beautiful state, and this past weekend we discovered a new area -- the North Cascades.
(Dad, I've included this map for you, hope you can read it. Go get your glasses)
Our annual church campout took place Thursday thru Saturday in Wenatchee, where we enjoyed time with friends. (Yup, our WHOLE church goes camping together every year and it is a BLAST!) We spent some time out on the lake, swam with Jazz, and wrapped up the talent show with a couple of songs. We even had a lakeside baptism Saturday morning before packing up.
This year, Davey and I decided to extend our camping trip by a couple of days by journeying north on the Cascade Loop. This area of the state boasts some pretty impressive peaks, with lots of greenery this time of year. So we loaded up the car and headed to the Ross Lake area with pitstops in Chelan and Winthrop. Chelan is a popular lake/tourist town. The downtown area was really busy and there were lots of people out on the lake. Winthrop is a small mountain town who's claim-to-fame is being designed as an Old Amercian West Town. It was really authentic looking, excluding all the parked cars instead of parked horses. We added this town on our list of "go-back-to's-on-the-motorcycle" because it was pretty incredible.
As we continued on our drive through the Cascade Mountains, we stopped at several viewpoints like this one overlooking Diablo Lake (yup, its that green).
We finally settled into our campsite at Colonial Creek Campground. Our site was waaaay back in the woods in a very quiet, secluded area. It was the perfect spot to relax and enjoy the incredible forest around us.
On Sunday, we packed up our camping gear and headed out for a little hike. The first trail we came to was called Pyramid Lake. We climbed a small hill to a sign that said the trail was 2.1 miles to the lake, which sounded like the perfect mid-day hike for us. The challenge, however, was that the 2.1 miles were completely uphill startign at a 1,560 ft elevation and ending at 2,692 ft. WHEW! And man, what a climb it was.
Even Jazz got a little workout with his backpack on
The trail was absolutely gorgeous the entire way, including lots of cool fungii
And a beautiful stream crossing about halfway up
When we finally reached the top, we discovered Pyramid Lake, which was created by a landslide many years ago. It's apparently extremely deep, but we weren't going to test it since the water was FREEZING cold!! 
But, some people decided to risk playing on the floating logs.
Jazz fell in only once. He confirmed that the water was indeed very cold.
After our hike we headed out on the long drive back home, having successfully adventured into a new area of the state.
Have you discovered any incredible places in the state you live? Have you ever taken on a challenging hike? What are some of your favorite "hidden treasures" that you've discovered on your travels?
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