We follow the ORV Pacific NW facebook groups to learn about our trailers and maybe if we’re lucky we’ll find some kindred spirits to share camping adventures with. They have several rendezvous every year somewhere between Arizona and Washington. When they announced a rendezvos in the North Cascades in May, we took the chance and booked a site. It would be followed by other camping in the North Cascades, then back to the Olympic Peninsula for a family campout. This is the ORV group after our Saturday night potluck.

The weather was mostly cold and rainy, but we had a big shelter and several events planned. The first one was a lesson in Geocaching, which I had thought for a long time might be interesting. We went with a group for a walk in the woods near the campground, then around the area to find several caches.

The Geocaching group invited us to join them on a jaunt up the road to Newhalem, which is a company town owned by Seattle City Light and populated entirely by employees of the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project. The power house has beautiful gardens and a walk around the area with a small creek and falls.

One of the many beautiful flowers in the gardens.

Ladder Creek Falls, a quintessential Pacific NW stream. 

Saturday we had two cooking events in the shelter out of the cold wind and rain. One was making corn tortillas and the other was making pasta. Both were surprisingly easy and also fun and delicious. Saturday night was a big potluck with all 50 people, including great food and some raffle prizes.

Sunday we took a road trip in the rain and checked out some other campgrounds in the area. We drove up to Baker Lake and although it was really pretty, didn’t see anything that would bring us back here for more camping.

When we pulled back into the campground, all the folks we had been spending time with were at our site because it was a central place to exercise their pups since the rain had finally ended for a few hours. I grabbed a couple of bins of wood and lit a fire in our pit and we spent the night enjoying the company of the group.

Sunday night we listened to it pour hard rain all night and into Monday morning. I checked the weather forecast for Concrete and then checked Yakima. That was a no brainer. Since Tim & Cindy had to cancel plans to join us and take care of his critically ill father in California, we were free to pivot and move our reservations across the mountains where it was significantly warmer and drier. So instead of a 20 minute drive to Rasar for our next campspot, we head east to Pearrygin Lake near Winthrop.

On a rainy Monday I joined some new friends to put together a National Parks puzzle. We’ll all have dinner out together tonight and tomorrow we’ll go find some sun.

The pix from the rendezvous are here.