Mountain Towns

Tate and I are off to Seattle for routine CI appointments.  We need to see two people and the only way to see them both the same day is to see the first one...

... at 8am.

Which means we leave home about 5:45am.

Fun times, said no one ever.

So to distract myself from the early wake-up,  here's the first small installment of trip photos.

We passed through several little mountain towns, some more picturesque than others.  Though we live near the mountains, that's not the same as living in the mountains.  You get a really different feeling when they're right there in front of you.

Newhalem is a little company town owned by Seattle City Light, populated by their employees - lots of hydroelectric, y'know?  (Did I ever tell you about "Our Dam Vacation"?)  Anyway... there's a nice place to stop and some interpretive displays.

The boys always loved the train.  And you can get up on it!

Kerry wanted a pic of him in the turbine.

But what gets me is the setting... in a tiny little bowl, between the foothills.

Looking toward the highway...

... and toward the play area, dwarfed by the surrounding hills.

And on the other end of our journey we passed through Darrington, another tiny town dominated by the Cascade Mountains.  We came through on a gorgeous, sunny day and I had a brief moment of thinking, "Wouldn't this be a beautiful place to live?" as I looked up over the gas station.

I mean, wouldn't you like to look across the valley at this?

Or have a farm here?

And then I came to my senses.

Because you know what happens in little mountain towns,

surrounded by steep slopes?

Rain.

I bet it rains there twice as much as it does here.  And that's a lot.  I bet you can only see all those beautiful mountains about 2% of the time.

But drive through on a sunny, fall day?

Gorgeous.

And in the winter?  With Whitehorse Mountain covered with snow?

Yah.  Takes your breath away, doesn't it?

(I didn't take the photo below - you can thank Uncle Google.)

So there you go.

Think of me, driving down the *ahem* slightly less beautiful  I-5 and back.