North Cascades Highway With The New York Times

A fellow Washington Exile living in Texas is always sending me things he thinks I'll find interesting that he finds in the New York Times. Usually I don't find these things at all interesting. This afternoon was an exception to the rule.

A New York Times correspondent, William Yardley, took a photographer, named Stuart Iselt, with him and traveled the North Cascades Highway, in Washington, from Sedro Woolley on the west side, to Twisp on the east. That is a screen shot, above, of the article in today's NY Times.

The North Cascades Highway opened in 1972. A northern pass across the Cascades had been in the planning for years. It was a major engineering feat. It connected the west side with an isolated part of Eastern Washington. This changed both sides. My side of the mountains, the west side, in the Skagit Valley, sort of boomed in the following years. My old hometown of Burlington got a huge regional mall, called, appropriately, The Cascade Mall, the design sort of replicating Cascade Mountain peaks, in sort of the same way Denver's new airport's look is inspired by the Rockies.

The New York Time's article consists of a very well done interactive map. Go here and start the tour. Click next to go to the next stop. At each stop there is a video that gives you a good idea of what that stop is like. The first stop on the tour is Sedro Woolley. Sedro Woolley is where my longtime fun friend, Tacomaite, Lulu's first husband grew up. I'll see Lulu in a few days. If I'm lucky my contact with her first husband will be limited. Like we who lived in the Skagit Valley often said, those Sedro sorts are difficult. Sedro Woolley is known for its Tarheels. I think that means hillbillies from North Carolina, but I'm not sure.

I remember going over North Cascades Pass the September before I moved to Texas. I doubt I will get that far north when I'm up in Tacoma for a month in about 5 days. But you never know.