North Cascades by Camper Van, Part Five - A Good Kind of Work

Towards the end of our trip, tired but happy, I commented camping was hard work. 

Elise, folding camping chairs nearby, noted, "Yes, but it's a good kind of work. Like waiting tables."

I immediately knew what she meant. It's not a feeling that is reserved for veterans of the restaurant industry, but anyone who has waited tables, tended bar, or worked the line would instantly understand certain types of work reap their own reward. Helping others or providing an experience to be remembered is such a reward.  

I usually don't mind washing dishes, but washing dishes while camping pushed the definition of 'a good kind of work'. The first night we fried hamburgers on the Coleman stove, and I made the mistake of not pouring the hamburger fat out of the pan as soon as the burgers were done. When I went to wash the pan, I was faced with a centimeter of solid white grease. For the rest of the week, everything I touched that came in close proximity of that pan felt greasy, the spatula, the plastic bottle of dishwasher soap, and practically every towel we had to dry the dishes with. 

We left Baker Lake on a cooler, Cloudy day. The snowy cap of Mt. Baker hid in the grey overcast, and Elise cursed my name for not stopping for photos of the peak the cloudless day before. We drove through the small, touristy town of Concrete, near the entrance of North Cascades National Park where we would spend the next two nights. We may have stopped at the roadside burger place twice and pizza place, Annie's Pizza, once, the later as we were leaving the park two days later. 

Dan and Janice had driven ahead and gone down to Diablo and the day to give Danny more time for his car nap. When we met them at Newhalem campground, they were parked in the a spot reserved for a walk-in campsite. Uh oh. What had I done?

The last time we camped, two years ago, I made all the campsite reservations months ahead of time, in January and February. This year, we didn't decide we were coming back to the States until a few weeks before we left, and I made all the campsite reservations at the last minute, no mean feat considering it was the week of 4th of July. We got lucky, though,  and found some good spots sprinkled throughout the Cascades (we were originally planning to explore the Olympic Peninsula but most of the campsites there were first-come first-serve. Given the demand, we opted for a sure thing, instead). Well, when we arrived in Newhalem, our sure thing turned out to be a walk-in site. I totally missed this when I booked the sites online. They wouldn't at all work for the camper van or car camping. 

Fortunately, we were able to find an unclaimed site we shared with Dan and Janice. This ignited the taco cook-off. Dan's spicy ground beef tacos versus my steak tacos (tortillas warmed on the grate of the Coleman stove) and Elise's idea to warm bathwater on two stoves for Danny's bucket bath. 

The last night of our trip found us back on Whidbey Island at Fort Ebey campground. It was the first and only night we were genuinely cold.