And here we go! The thing about the Pacific Northwest is that we can go mauka (toward the mountains) in two different directions! We just turned mauka (north) along Highway 141 in Washington State.

We really love exploring new areas, and this was definitely a perfect time of year to do it.

We’d only heard of Trout Lake before but not the other two.

There were a lot of vineyards along the way as we drove.

Entering Husum:

Pacific Northwest history:

We stopped and got out of the car here in Husum to walk over the bridge over the White Salmon River. This is a very popular area for whitewater rafters.

There’s the bridge that we walked over.

A couple of street signs.

We then drove over the bridge and crossed the river, and continued on our way.

The road stretched out before us; this is really pretty country!

New town! I read about BZ Corner after we got home. It looks like a fabulous place and now I wish we’d stopped there.

Along the highway:

Barn! For those of you who don’t know, we love seeing old barns.

Entering Trout Lake; we’d had no idea what to expect. My friend, Liz, had told me about this place and that it was a lovely drive, so she was the impetus for us coming here.

Liz told me about this cafe, where we planned to eat lunch. She told me the food was good, but expensive, so had warned me ahead of time about that. She was right; we split a burger and fries because it was, and were charged $2.00 for an extra plate. Ouch. But the food was good.

We were told by a local couple that the lake wasn’t even a lake and there wasn’t much to see there; instead, it’s the gateway to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. We hadn’t known that, and it was a little disappointing, but we were okay with that. Even though we didn’t know it then, we were on our way to a wonderful adventure down the road.

Historic Baptist Church.

We left Trout Lake and headed back towards home.

Pau this chapter…the next advencha awaits!