Bacon Creek and the Skagit September17th-19th

Driving through North Cascades National Park we found ourselves looking at the Skagit river quite a bit, and pulled over at a boat launch. Mike left me and the kayaks in search for a take out down the river. He pulled over to look at a particularly white looking area, and debated for a very long time if we should try it, or if we should get out before hand. Thankfully, he decided to err on the side of sanity and we stopped before the biggest continuous wave train I have ever seen.

I can't think of anything witty to say about this picture, but I think it's pretty funny anyway

It looks so pretty and calm right here, but even in the calm spots the water was really moving-It made me dizzy to look down while we were zooming along, especially since the water was so clear and you could see all the way to the bottom.

The scenery was really nice along the way

And here is the famous wave train- we were actually trying to decide if we should try it (I almost just parked the vanagon right after this, and wasn't' going to tell Emilie, leaving it for a nice surprise at the end.) After we took out we went by and got this view from the road. At a closer look, the waves were the size of me, so maybe it was a good thing I chickened out.

A very good thing

After the river we decided to try to find a place to camp for the night. Driving along we saw a sign for Bacon Creek Road. It was a gravel road in the national forest, always a good sign for free camping. And sure enough, about 2 miles down, we came to out best site yet. It's hard to describe how amazing it was- so I'll just let the pictures do it...

And then there was the creek- I wasn't expecting much from a place named Bacon Creek, but it was amazing.

So of course, when you have crystal clear water, multiple rapids and 60 degree weather, what choice do you have but to tube down it? We were hooked as soon as we tried it- and ended up spending the better part of 2 days floating and screaming down.

Notice my death grip on the rope, this was the first time we actually stayed in the tube going down together, so I was pretty excited.

Oh yeah, and we found a couple of blackberries right along the road- we had them with everything. Blackberry pancakes, blackberry oatmeal, blackberry cereal....mmmmm