Birthday Weekend Getaway to Skagit Valley

Thank you, Debby, for my perfect birthday present this year, a scenic river float. (Perhaps there is some truth to the rumor that I am hard to shop for.)

We drove two hours on Saturday morning to the town of Concrete in the Skagit River Valley. This is a wide east-west glacial valley that extends from the Cascades to the Puget Sound in northern Washington State.

We needed to stop in Concrete to get checked into our bed and breakfast for the night, on a farm south of town. We were amazed at the fine view of Mt. Baker's southern flank from the deck of our B&B cottage. Below are the wide and long of it.

Then we were off to the town of Rockport 15km upstream to meet our river guide. We were joined there by the other eight tour customers and six tour crew members. We all boarded an old bus for the drive to the town of Marblemount another 15km upstream. The bus towed a trailer containing our red and blue inflatable rafts. The day's excitement was to be a 2.5 hour scenic float back down the Skagit River to Rockport.

The three towns of Concrete, Rockport, and Marblemount have a lot in common. They are all wide spots in State Highway 20, the North Cascades Scenic Highway that follows the Skagit River through the valley. They each have a bridge over the Skagit River, which flows along the south side of Hwy. 20. They each are situated near the confluence of a major tributary of the Skagit (Marblemount - Cascade River, Rockport - Sauk River, Concrete - Baker River). Concrete has the additional feature of being the gateway to the Mt. Baker National Recreation Area.

The Skagit River is 240km long, originating in the Cascades of British Columbia, flowing south into Washington until it reaches the Skagit Valley and turns west. The Skagit is a Class 2 river through the valley. As Washington's largest river system, the Skagit is capable of flows approaching 5,000m^3/s. It was a tamer 500m^3/s for our float (as estimated by our guide), which is about the midpoint (exponentially speaking) of its discharge range. Flows are regulated by a sequence of three hydroelectric dams upstream in Washington, as well as dams on its major tributaries.

The Skagit river system watershed reaches the flanks of the area's two active stratovolcanos, Mt. Baker and Glacier Peak. Both rise above 3200m. Glacier Peak is the more recently active and dangerous. A massive eruption/lahar 13,000 years ago changed the course of the Sauk River. After this event, the Sauk River joined the Suiattle River, flowing north now to become the largest tributary of the Skagit River, thereby abandoning its prior configuration as a tributary of the Stillaguamish River.

The Skagit river system is designated a national Wild and Scenic River. It hosts several salmonid species including all five native species of salmon and two species of trout. It is winter home to hundreds of bald eagles through the valley, and is winter host to thousands of migrating snow geese and hundreds of swans each year at its estuary. Beaver, river otter, and muskrat are found in the system, as well as black-tailed deer, coyote, raccoon, and a wide array of smaller mammals along its banks. Wolves, cougar, black bear, and even rumored brown bear are apex predators in the upper reaches of its watershed.

Our bus crossed the Skagit at the Marblemount bridge to reach the launch area on the opposite shore. Up close, the first thing one notices is the green hue of the river water, a typical indicator of a river that is fed by glacial melt. Melt water from glaciers contains significant amounts of suspended, silt-sized rock particles called rock flour, which changes the way light is refracted and absorbed by the water. Green and turquoise hues result that vary with angle of sun, angle of view, and water depth, among many variables.

We divided up between the two boats and then launched.

We were dressed for success on the river.

It was a marvelous day for a float. Our river guide kept up an easy banter to pass the time even more pleasurably.

There were a couple of minor hazards along the route, a boulder in the river bed, a man-made logjam to shore up a cut bank that was undermining the Highway 20 roadbed.

There were other more natural river bank treatments as well.

After our float, which was relaxing for the mind if not the body, we explored Baker Lake by car and checked out Horseshoe Cove campground for future trips.

We returned to our lodging in Concrete and got to know the proprietor, who gave Debby a bag full of cuttings from her garden. These are now growing in a pot on our deck.

We went out to explore the farm. It extends down to the south bank of the Skagit river, where there is a small sand beach (which my 5yo iPhone 3GS managed to record).

Debby posed by some iris for me.

Sunday morning we returned to Baker Lake to investigate the road to the Mt. Baker National Recreation Area. It turned out to involve nine miles of dirt mountain road which my chauffeur was not up for. So instead we went on to check out another campground on the lake, and passed a clear view of Mt. Baker's southeast flank as the road crossed Boulder Creek.

We stopped at a small winery on the way home, which was included on our tour package. What a sweet weekend.

Wooden Boat Festival

Dan and Sharon generously offered us their Port Townsend cottage. We chose an exciting weekend, the annual Wooden Boat Festival. We arranged to meet Rick there, as he is docenting on one of the exhibits, a tugboat called Sandman, just over 100 years old. It had motored up from its home port near Olympia.

Many visitors came by boat. The weather was fantastic, clear and around 80°F afternoons, with cool but comfortable evenings.

The 90', 1938 yawl Odyssey, a Sparkman & Stephens design, was tied up outside the exhibit area. It is used by the Tacoma area Sea Scouts. I wonder if I am too old?

Inside the exhibit hall were some beautiful examples of small boat workmanship and exhibitions of boat-building tool use. The adjacent exhibit docks were not up to demand, with many more boats included than could be tied-up end-to-end, so some were rafted together up to four deep.

Debby caught me standing on the deck of Orion, a 57 foot, 1934 yawl. It is a beautiful specimen, yet another design from Sparkman and Stephens. I love yawls.

The Sandman was rafted third out from the dock, which presented a challenge. We all made it over and back with no slip-ups. The first boat we went across was the Elmore, a 68-foot, 122 year-old Puget Sound tug, outfitted with a large and functional galley.

Pictured are Rick and Debby in front of the Sandman's wheel house, a view of the wheel inside, and Rick commenting on Debby's exit onto the neighbor boat. We borrowed Rick from his docent duties to have a leisurely lunch and catch up with his recent activities.

About town, we took pictures of some local landmarks. There are many Victorian houses, some of substantial size, dating to the early years of the town, shortly after the Civil War.

Our loaner cottage is well located, walking distance to parks, market, and the old town. We visited Chetzemoka Park at the end of the street. I photographed Debby and the view to Whidbey Island, across the main shipping channel in and out of Puget Sound. Debby photographed a girl practicing dance (in a tree). I got a photo of some other local critters.

We bought groceries and made breakfasts and dinners at the cottage, but ate lunch in town. In the quiet time at the cottage, I re-acquainted myself with the poems of T.S. Eliot. Now that's a well-appointed lodging.

We attended the festival's concert/dance Saturday night under a big tent, seen above behind the salmon sculpture. Headlining was The Better Half, a local Port Townsend R&B Funk-Jazz group that got the audience on their feet with a solid beat. The audience area was split down the middle with drinkers on one side of the fence and abstainers on the other. Being a boating crowd, one side was much more occupied than the other.

We returned Sunday, first taking a drive out to Sequim to see the area, noted for a climate more like SoCal than Puget Sound. Being 9/11, the ferry home had an escort: an ~25' Coast Guard port defender with manned bow-mounted machine gun, presumably to ensure no other boats came close. I had never seen that level of vigilance here before.

It was a great weekend. Thanks Dan and Sharon.