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Summer lingers in Seattle – or starts late, depending on your perspective. This means September is often a bonus month, the days long and dry before the onset of winter rains. It may also be the best time for regional food, when the harvest of grapes, tomatoes and apples from east of the mountains joins the fruit of the sea, available year-round on Puget Sound. You’ll enjoy Seattle – with Pikes Place Market, lunch atop the Space Needle, and the cappuccinos and half-decaf, skinny frappuccinos with extra nutmeg and the likes. The state has resigned itself to being a major-league attraction, with Olympic rainforest where you’ll be dripped on, soaring Mount Rainier where you can peer into ice caves, and San Juan Islands scattered across Puget Sound, with summer pods of orca. Then there’s the mountains of the North Cascades, where towering peaks named Mount Terror, Mount Despair and Mount Triumph conjure up the wild and untrammeled terrain. There’s only 80 maintained miles of road, North Cascades Highway. About sixty miles north of Seattle, turn east on this spectacular drive, following the Skagit River into the mountains – you can tell you’re on the right road by the traffic (it thins out) and the scenery (it gets better and better). Drive on to the Methow Valley, and a mountain top lodge 1,000 ft above it, with luxurious rooms, a fine restaurant and saddle horses. Next stop is Lake Chelan, jutting 55-miles into North Cascades National Park – you can leave your car and take the Lady of the Lake to Stehekin on the far shore, a time-warp community in beautiful surroundings. A twisting route leads to the steep grades of Mount Rainier, and beyond, Long Beach Peninsula. Walk or ride on horseback for miles on a broad expanse of beach, with sand dollars, crab shells and starfish and oysters, lots of them. This is where Chinook Indians once camped and fished, and where Louis and Clark finally made it to the Pacific Ocean. There aren’t any crowds and there’s nothing in your face except the breeze.
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