Great Western Road Trip: The Roads and Scenery of Washington State

We arrived in the state of Washington from Portland, Oregon on Interstate 5. As you head north towards Seattle, the scenery became very reminiscent of our native Oklahoma - low hills and rolling plains with occasional forests. There are slightly more hills and the forests off the roadside have quite a few more evergreens, but overall, the general landscape is very much the same. The one major difference is that you occasionally see a few massive mountains towering over the horizon.

The first major mountain to be seen from southern Washington is Mount St. Helens. The fact that the top of Mount St. Helens blew off in a volcanic eruption just a few short decades ago is still very obvious. There are a couple routes off the main road that you can take to drive around Mt. St. Helens, but I think they're probably about 100 miles for the whole loop. If you take Highway 504 east from Interstate 5, you can get to a visitor center for Mt. St. Helens in about 5 miles. At the visitor center there is a nice garden and trail with clear views of Mt. St. Helens as well as a museum (for a fee) about the volcano.

Having already seen several active volcanoes in Costa Rica, we weren't entirely interested in the less spectacular Mount St. Helens. However, it is still an active volcano and for anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to see one outside the US, you probably won't want to pass up your chance at getting nearer Mount St. Helens.

The landscape doesn't really change much as you enter into Seattle. However, the evergreen trees become more prominent and Mt. Rainier dominates any clear view of the horizon. Also, if you get a clear view towards the western horizon, you can see the Olympic Mountain range. Looking at them from across the Puget Sound (Seattle's bay area) makes for a very nice sight. If you have the time, a several hour detour to Olympic National Park is sure to impress with the best showcase of the United States' temperate rainforests.

Seattle itself is very nice with some very pleasing architecture in both downtown and the world's fair area (the part with the Space Needle). The fact that it's surrounded by the Puget Sound just makes it that much more pleasant.

As you head north on Interstate 5 from Seattle, the landscape is still much the same - forested roadsides (with evergreens being the most prominent type of tree) and rolling landscape, but not exactly hills. As you get closer to Canada, the area around the road flattens out and forested hills rise up on the sides, making for a more scenic landscape. By the time you get to Mt. Vernon, another mountain range rises above the northern and eastern horizon. This really gives the landscape enough depth to make it truly beautiful.

If you continue to head north on Interstate 5, you'll reach the Washington-Canadian border. Expect long lines and excessive inspections (if you have a fair amount of luggage in your car). Thankfully, there's a nice little park area with some monuments and flower beds where everyone (but the driver) can relax while waiting in line. Canada itself, for the brief portion that leads to Vancouver, pretty much continues with the same landscape and vegetation. Thankfully, it's pretty nice.

Vancouver, British Columbia is not a spectacularly impressive city. Its sprawling suburbs are kind of a mess and its road system can be difficult to navigate. Its downtown area features a lot of monotonous high-rise apartments and very few examples of architecture that stand out at all. It seems to be an exclusively pragmatic city with plenty of clubs and hangout spots for college students, but not much to attract anyone else.

As you come back into Washington from Canada and head west on Highway 20 towards North Cascades National Park, the evergreen-forested hills quickly rise up much larger and before long they're full-scale mountains. Along the way, there are several rivers at the side of the road that help to make everything incredibly pleasant and scenic. There is no charge to take Highway 20 straight through North Cascades National Park and I highly recommend this incredibly scenic route.

The first portion of North Cascades National Park runs between some very high and completely forest-covered mountains alongside the Skagit River. There are very many waterfalls along the stretch of the first half of the park. Several of the waterfalls are very large and with upper, middle and lower falls, and many of the waterfalls are smaller ones that are either directly next to the road (and therefore, easily accessible) or on the other side of the valley from it.

There are also several dams along the river that create some very scenic lakes in the valley below the towering mountains. Around the same time that the waterfalls start becoming scarcer, the mountains rise up even higher and behind the forested ones are a set of very rocky snow-capped mountains. If you take this double row of mountains and add the rivers and dammed lakes that are squeezed between them, you end up with an incredible landscape of great depth and beauty.

As you head east on Highway 20 out of North Cascades National Park, the mountains slowly drop off. Within about 30 minutes to the east of the park, even the forests thin out and are mostly replaced with prairie grasses reminiscent of southern Utah. There are still some trees (though not too many and mostly along the roadside and people's houses) and there are frequent creeks running alongside or cutting underneath the road. Instead of the landscape being mostly flat (like southern Utah), instead it has mostly rolling hills with occasional tall rocky mounds jutting out here and there.

After another 30 minutes or so of driving east in Washington, the rocky mounds and most of the already-sparse trees disappear. But, the landscape becomes more hilly and even with its desert/prairie-type vegetation, it's never quite as bare as Arizona. As you near Spokane, irrigated green fields dominate portions of the landscape and some of the hills seem to be covered with natural green grasses.

The entire landscape flattens out into yellow plains just before you enter Spokane, Washington. However, Spokane itself has plenty of trees, a nice looking downtown area, and mountains on the horizon. As you leave Spokane on Interstate 90 East, the landscape once again looks a lot like Oklahoma - low-lying, mostly-forested hills at a distance from the road, a mix of yellow-green grasses and dark-green trees (though these happen to be mostly evergreens). This continues until shortly after you arrive in Idaho.

Overall, Washington is a state that can give you a massive variety in landscape and vegetation just by driving east or west. It ranges from lush, temperate rainforests, towering mountains and low valleys, to flat deserts. Washington is a very scenic and varied state and well worth the trip.