From time to time, we travel on Highway 20, also known as the North Cascades highway. It is the road that connects Anacortes to the west on Fidalgo Island with the high country to the east. The highway is he northernmost route across the Cascade Mountain Range in Washington. It is closed in the winter because of the danger of avalanches. The day we arrived in Mount Vernon last November after experiencing a foot of snow in Leavenworth on the other side of Stevens Pass, the pass to the south of the North Cascade Highway, was the day that the North Cascade Highway was closed for the winter. That means that we haven’t lived here when Highway 20 has had the pressure of the traffic traveling the Cascade Loop. A couple of days ago, however, as we waited to get onto Highway 20 on our way to a walk on the campus of the former Northern State Hospital, we noticed an increase in motorhomes and vehicles with campers. It made me wonder if the pass was open, so I took a look at the Washington Department of Transportation website. The pass is not currently open, but it is set to open today at 1 pm. Crews plowing snow from the east and west sides met last Thursday. After the snow plowing crews meet, the work begins to repair the damage caused by snow and debris traveling the avalanche pathways. Signs, guardrails and pavement are all damaged every winter.

It isn’t just the high snowfall that causes the highway to be closed. The technology exists to keep the road plowed. Both Stevens and Snoqualmie Passes are kept open year round. However, the North Cascades Highway has 27 avalanche chutes. In order to keep the highway safely open during the winter, structures would have to be built allowing the avalanches to pass over the top of the highway in 27 different locations. Those structures, furthermore, would have to be engineered for conditions that don’t exist on the other passes. Some of the avalanche chutes stretch over 2,000 feet, more than double the longest avalanche chutes on the other highway passes over the North Cascades. The May 5 opening is considered to be early. Some springs it takes a couple more weeks before the highway is ready for travel.

So we are about to experience a new boost in traffic when the pass opens today. It won’t affect us much here in town, but it may affect our journeys to nearby areas where we like to hike. I’m not sure where the motorhomes we saw were headed, but perhaps they were planning to camp in North Cascades National Park.

The North Cascades Highway is incredibly beautiful, with high alpine peaks that are snow-covered year round. North Cascades National Park, accessible from our side of the mountains even in the winter, is a true gem of the National Park system and worthy of a visit by those who enjoy the outdoors and scenic beauty. It is the only National Park of which we are aware where you can still occasionally find a campsite without a prior reservation. A few years ago we camped there on our way west and had a delightful time just an hour away from our destination at our son’s home. North Cascades National Park will definitely be a destination for camping with our grandchildren.

The opening of the pass means the start of a new season in our new life. The first year in a new place is always filled with discovery as we learn the rhythms of the place. Of course there are still plenty of pandemic restrictions in place, so what we are experiencing isn’t quite the same as a “normal” year, but each year is different even when there isn’t a pandemic. So we watch and we notice things that the locals take for granted. Of course the pass opens up every spring, usually in May. Of course the number of tourists increases. The motorhome and RV traffic may be a bit higher this year. At least that has been reported in other locations. People feel that traveling by RV is safer than staying in motels and so RV travel has increased during the pandemic. After an initial phase of closed campgrounds and people staying home, travel has gradually increased over the time of the pandemic.

Because the weather here is quite different from what we experienced in South Dakota, we don’t know exactly how to read the seasons. In many ways it still feels like spring to us. There are plenty of tulips in bloom even though the tulip festival officially ended last week. The weather is highly variable, with highs in the 70’s some days and in the 50’s on other days. We still are experiencing a few rainy days, but fewer than was the case a month ago. I have to remember my floppy hat and sunscreen when I work at the farm. We expect that not only are the winters milder here than in South Dakota, so too the summers will be a bit more moderate, with fewer really hot days. Although we have visited in the summer a lot in recent years, we still have much to learn about this new place where we plan to make our home. We’ve been here full time for almost six months, though it doesn’t seem like it. We’ve experienced the passage of half of a year. It also means that we have six more months before we will have experienced the full cycle, so there is plenty for us to learn and discover. Just as we have taken a few trips to the coast to see how it looks, we’ll soon take a drive to the high country just to check out the snow and see the vistas from the other side of our new territory.

It is a good time for us to have a new place to explore. We have time and energy to look around and leisure to not feel guilty about taking a day for a drive. We are learning how to be retired and so far it is a joyful discovery.