Last month when my husband and I visited friends at their vacation home at Lake Chelan, Washington, we all took a daytrip to the Western-themed town of Winthrop, nestled against the eastern foothills of the North Cascades. The 75-minute drive took us along the banks of the Columbia River, north and west through dry, sagebrush-covered hills and benches and valleys green with pastures and orchards irrigated by the river’s waters. We branched off to follow the Methow River, the mountains drawing closer and evergreens becoming the dominant vegetation as we neared the little town of Winthrop.

The town, founded in 1890, at one time boasted a population of 1,000 or more and served as a regional hub for gold miners, cattle ranchers, fur trappers, loggers and farmers. Today the year-round population hovers between 500 and 600 souls sustained primarily by tourists and outdoor enthusiasts who come to enjoy winter sports, including cross-country skiing (boasting the largest network of groomed trails in North America), snowshoeing and snowmobiling, and summertime pursuits including hiking, mountain biking, fly-fishing, rafting and kayaking. In the early 1970s, as the North Cascades Highway, bridging Western Washington through the Cascades with Central and Eastern Washington, neared completion, the citizens decided to embrace their history and remodeled main street businesses with 1890s storefronts, wooden boardwalks and signage to welcome visitors with an Old West theme.

We enjoyed a lengthy and meandering stroll through town, finding even the gas station embraced the historical look. We poked into a few galleries, a glass art shop, some boutiques, a kitchen store and a surprisingly well-stocked wine and spirits shop with some very unique and hard-to-find bottles and vintages. Winthrop offers an assortment of dining options and also a range of vacation rentals, from rustic cabins to newer homes and apartments, many ranged along the banks of the pristine Methow and Chewuch rivers running through town. We wandered into one store that offered everything from greeting cards and swimsuits to gold panning supplies and fishing licenses, and we also spent considerable time in the Trail’s End Bookstore, a roomy, welcoming space with a large collection of every genre of new and used books. By that time we were ready for some cool refreshment and found it at Sheri’s Sweet Shoppe, where we slurped up generous scoops of ice cream on the shady outside deck  overlooking the water.

Having contributed to the local economy, we hopped back in the car and decided to extend our road trip a little further, aiming for Washington Pass (elevation 5,477 feet) on the North Cascades Scenic Highway (State Route 20), another 30 minutes or so down (or, actually, up) the road. Gradually the mountains closed in on either side of the two-lane highway as we climbed nearly 4,000 feet into the Cascades.  We were near North Cascades National Park, one of only a few national parks which does not charge an entrance fee. This warm, dry summer, following a relatively mild winter with a smaller-than-normal snowpack, meant that there was little snow to be seen, but the park boasts more than 300 glaciers on its granite peaks. This area usually receives multiple feet of snow each winter, and the highway is closed for several months (this year it reopened on June 14). Avalanches are common, and areas of the roadway are buried under feet of snow for long stretches until road crews dig them out each spring.

The route reminded me of Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park, with the towering, craggy peaks and U-shaped, glacier-carved valleys reminiscent of that other mountainous park. At last we pulled in to our ultimate destination: the Washington Pass Overlook, which would afford us spectacular views as well as informational signage providing us with history of the roadway and the forces which created the stunning landscape. That landscape provided monumental challenges to those who built the highway which, from first funding to final paving, took 79 years to complete! The final 63 miles alone, over the highest terrain, required 35 separate contractors and 10 summers to finish, with the roadway finally opened in 1972.

We wandered from one viewpoint to the next, each providing magnificent scenes of Liberty Bell Mountain and the Early Winters Spires, dwarfing the roadway far below. The mountain slopes opposite our vantage point were scarred with avalanche chutes and carved by long-since melted glaciers,   a testament to Mother Nature’s power. We also marveled at the trees of the subalpine forest, with short needles, stunted branches and weathered, twisted trunks. We lingered for quite a while, drinking in the quiet and the beauty of this wild place, only recently breached by modern engineering. As the sun dipped to the west and the mountains’ shadows deepened in the valleys, we made our way back, retreating as the glaciers once had, back to tamer terrain.

— Patricia Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor