The Next Hundred Miles: Heatwave and our final days in Washington

As you can see from the above, we are finally feeling the heat of summer (in the Pacific Northwest that is). We actually see people in shorts and virtually every RV has the ac running. The temps are brutal but we will survive 😁.

We started the week with a visit to the Boeing assembly plant. No pictures were allowed on the tour so you will have to trust me that it was very cool. I can say we got a glimpse of the newest 777X which has composite wings. They fold to allow it to get into existing gates with it's significantly longer wings.

Cindy's elbow is doing better so this week, in the heat 😁, we managed to get some hiking in.

For our first hike of the week we returned to a place we visited together about 10 years ago after an Alaska cruise... Snoqualmie Falls and the famous Salish Lodge which is built over the falls.

We hiked to the base of the falls which we had also done the first time we visited. Somehow the 900 foot elevation change in a half mile seemed a bit tougher than I recall ☹️

The pic above is where we stopped by the river to sit on the rocks and have a picnic lunch.

Next we went to the towns of Index and Gold Bar. There we hiked along the Skynomish River.

Hard to tell now, but in the spring and early summer the run off has this area about 10' deeper and most of these rocks are under water making these class 4 and 5 rapids.

On the opposite side of the road from the river are sheer granite walls that are a famous climbing area. If you enlarge these pics and look closely you can see some climbers.

After we left that area we headed to Wallace Falls SP. We decided to hike to the falls.

According to the map at the trail head it was 2.1 miles each way on what was listed as "moderate" trails. I can only assume the term moderate has some age and fitness level associated with it. It was not moderate for us 😗

The trail climbed 1100 feet from the base to the falls which felt like it was straight up the whole way. This was by far the most strenuous hike we have done to date, but it was worth every step.

The picture of us at the falls does not begin to expose how beat we were. By the way, I neglected to mention that we parked about a half mile outside the park with a significant up hill hike to get to the base of the trail. Still we agreed it was absolutely worth it.

We now leave Washington ...