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Tag Archives: Nooksack River

More Scenes from a Road Trip

Luna got pretty tired after two days of hiking so on Thursday we took it a little bit easier. We started with breakfast in Glacier with my uncle and cousin and it was nice to catch up. The dogs got to hang out on the porch with us along with their buddy Chomper, my uncle’s dog. Somehow I missed getting photos of him.

Afterwards we saw some of the sights we had been driving by earlier in the week. The steel flume was originally made of wood and used to generate hydro power for mining over 100 years ago. It appears to still be in use. I could hear water running through it and bits of gravel hitting the inside. It was cold and had condensation on the outside. Sky enjoyed swimming in another stretch of the river and Luna enjoyed watching.

Mt Baker
Nooksack Falls
Nooksack River
What a stick!
Love that clear water
I’ll just up here and watch
Steel flume

Moving Water

There is something mesmerizing about watching water move. It’s constantly changing. Changing velocity and color and shape. A small creek doesn’t change too much but if you slow down the speed or take away the color, it looks much different. A river like the Nooksack seems to come in pulses of meltwater from the glaciers high in the mountains.

A creek shot at two different shutter speeds

 

And in color and black and white

 

An evening along the Nooksack

We Got Away for a Few Days

The girls and I looked at our calendars and realized that we had five days with nothing scheduled and the air quality around here was going downhill due to forest fires both nearby and farther away in Canada. So we packed the camper with food and bedding and headed to NW Washington, specifically to the Mount Baker area.

There are only two campgrounds in between the town of Glacier and Artist Point, with about fifty campsites and most of those are reserveable six months in advance. Well, of course, we didn’t plan our lives six months in advance so I asked at the ranger station in Glacier and got some advice on dispersed camping. I had hoped to be higher in the mountains, closer to Mt Baker and Artist Point but we ended up just 4 1/2 miles out of Glacier on a bumpety bump road. The good thing (ask Sky) is that we were right on the north fork of the Nooksack River. There was clean glacial water and a couple of areas deep enough for Sky to swim. I also saw American Dippers along the edges. How they can see through all that glacial flour, I don’t know but they were diving for food.

We did not escape the smoke and Monday and Tuesday were particularly bad but not as bad as here.

Here are a few scenes from near our campsite.

Happy dog
Cool rocks
Luna swam some
Is this big enough?
Many trees were draped with moss and lichen but it was all very dry.
Devil’s club. We gave it a wide berth.
Smoky air
Look what Sky found!
Fireweed
Reddish crescent moon