UPDATE: Steve noted that we passed Trout Lake, not Troutdale. Given our successful drive, I can verify his correction 🙂

Ann and I are traveling to Seattle today, but instead of taking our usual route over Snoqualmie Pass, we decided to do some exploring while the weather is nice.

So, we plan to go along the southern area of the state through some towns (Bickleton, Glenwood, and Troutdale) where neither of us has explored. From Troutdale we plan take forest road 23, which winds through the Cascade Mountains, to Randle. We thought this would be a good opportunity to explore the area for future camping trips.

To give some perspective, normally it is a three hour, 173 mile, trip from Pasco to Randle. Given we’ll be stopping, driving slowly, etc, we be much longer.

Here’s our expected path. The dotted lines from Bickleton, where there is a carousel museum of some kind, indicates a cutoff we hope to make to Highway 97 and Satus Pass. There we want to have lunch at St. Johns Bakery. It’s a well regarded food stop in the middle of nowhere that’s part of the St. John Monastery.

I’ll report on Saturday night if we made it (or not report if we didn’t make it out . . . lol)