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Here are some photos of a day-trip that Lin and I took together on Oct. 8, 2000. We sure had a great time!

Lin suggested that we hunt for a lake in the mountains behind Roslyn, WA that her mother told her about. She bought a gazetteer and I packed a picnic and strapped the basket to the rack on my new KTM.
We met up at 7:30 Sunday morning and rode to North Bend for breakfast. Then up to Roslyn and into the hills behind it. We rode up a dirt road to the lake and it was very pretty, indeed! Kudos to Lin's mom for the reference!

We also checked out the camping possibilities at Cooper Lake and Pete Lake. But we had lunch beside a lake that was fed by the Cle Ellum River, and that was about 60% dried up. It was legal to ride off-road vehicles up the dry lake bed to some primitive camping spots that were nestled in the pines. This lake is probably only full when there is runoff from the melting snow. We exited the main road back at the water, so you can see how big this lake is when it's full!

A friendly butterfly kept me company as we feasted on my famous tuna salad sandwiches, chips, cookies, and plums.
Next we rode back to Snoqualmie Pass and there turned off onto some more dirt roads over Stampede Pass. We were headed to Lester, WA. The road was quite steep, with dramatic switchbacks. Alas, though, we could not reach Lester, WA, since it is on land that now provides the water for Tacoma, WA and all the residents have been displaced over the years. But a helpful employee of the utilities company showed us on his map where we should go to get over the mountains to Greenwater, WA. We followed his directions and were rewarded with some of the most breathtaking scenery of the day. While the clearcut mountainsides did bother me, I marvelled at the clarity of the view from on top!

In this picture, there is a very faint browm mountain (brown because all of the trees have been chopped down) in the background that has a beige horizontal stripe across it. That was our road! And when I took this photo, we were only about halfway down!

All in all, I bet we rode about 80 miles of dirt roads, culminating in a cold beer at a tavern in Greenwater. On the way down, we passed two guys on dirtbikes who seemed to be having as much fun as we were! It was a great ride and my skills offroad are definitely improving. I'm lucky to have someone as skilled and patient as Lin to go with! And of course, the weather was perfect, even if the gazetteer was not.








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