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| We had many mountain views once we hit the North Cascades area. |
First was a 0.25 mile walk to a waterfall. We walked through a lichen-covered alder forest. |
Many flowers were in bloom, including this salmonberry flower. |
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| This is a close-up of a salmonberry leaf. |
Everywhere we looked we saw greenery. |
There were a lot of butterflies. This one is an Azure. |
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| This is a "Comma" (or so Anna tells me.) Or maybe, I kid you not, it's a "Question Mark." I think the biologists were running out of ideas. |
Here's the waterfall we walked to. |
Downstream was a beautiful forest. |
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| We sat on a cliff above the waterfall. |
Many mosses and ferns grew on the cliff. |
This pretty white flower was growing directly on the cliff face. |
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| Looking up, we could see the sun shining through the leaves of more cliff-dwelling plants. |
Then we drove to the North Fork Sauk Trail. We ended up walking almost to the Blue Lake Trail before turning around and coming back. |
Anna always reads the signs. She said these were particularly well done. I believed her. |
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| There was lots of Skunk Cabbage and it was very...aromatic. |
It likes to grow near water. |
This was an old-growth forest and we could see huge root masses from trees that had fallen. |
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| We saw much moss and many fallen logs in this very primeval forest. |
Moss covered many of the tree branches. |
Anna standing next to a tree that, well, hadn't fallen. Yet. |
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| The path was very pleasant to walk along. |
We stopped for a while by a creek. Anna drew the mountain in the distance... |
...and I took pictures of the creek. |
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| Anna took this very nice picture of me next to the creek. |
Further down, we left the trail to get glimpse of the Sauk River itself. |
Further on we saw more Skunk Cabbages, and it started to rain. It got very dark in the forest. |
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| Our psychadelic fungus. (It was dark here, and the camera's flash made for strange colors!) |
After the rain, the sun came back out and shone on all the drops of rain on the plants, including this Western Trillium. |
Looking up the hill to the left of the trail. |
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| "Look! I've seen the light! It's right over there!" |
Sunbeams on the trees and bushes. |
A close-up of the mosses and seedlings on top of a rotting log. |
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| We saw lots of clumps of Trillium. |
All of the creeks had these worn footbridges spanning them. |
I just liked this picture. |
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| More forest. |
Forest. |
Forest. |
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