We’re headed to Chelan via bus. After breakfast and loading up our gear, we hopped on board a free bus north. We were debating the detour route to prevent any skips in Washington, but after hearing news of treacherous river crossings and glacier trails, we opted out.

After getting to Chelan, we set up our tents at the local RV park and wandered around the town. It’s located on Lake Chelan, a beautiful narrow yet long lake that stretches all the way to Stehekin. The ferry doesn’t leave until tomorrow morning so we have plenty of time to relax for another day.

We played a round of putt putt at a course that was actual turf rather than Astro turf. That’s a first for me, though I’m sure it was much more common at some point. Burgers and shakes were next before heading back to our tents for the night.

We were told that the sprinklers go off by our tents within the window of 11PM and 7AM so we located all the sprinkler heads and built walls around them out of sticks and rocks. Fingers crossed this keeps our tents dry.

Resting easy…

I hope these photos start uploading soon. So much to share.

We started today with a 2.5 hour ferry from Chelan to Stehekin around 8:30AM. The ferry itself was the most legit form of water transportation we’ve taken thus far - complete with a cafe and restroom on the first level. It reminded me of a smaller scale cape ferry.

Once in Stehekin, we caught a bus to a nearby bakery where we lounged about eating carbs and sugar for a solid three hours. The town of Stehekin can’t have more than 100 people that live there year round - just a guess. The word quaint seems fitting for much of the structures in the area and without our bus ride, we’d have no real way of getting the 11 miles to trail (aside from walking but we’re not too interested in that for some reason).

After the bakery, we hopped back on the shuttle bus to the trail head and began our five mile hike to camp. As far as scenery goes, we didn’t see anything unique to the area but did notice some salmon below a bridge that were spawning. A cool sight and had the fisherman in our group itching to get out there.

We’re camped at a designated site in the North Cascades National Forest with 77 miles left until the border.

Happy trails…