Fall colors create the backdrop for late season fishing at Lake GIlette

The Northeast corner of Washington State continues to amaze us. We’d always pictured this part of the country to be fairly barren, flat and uninteresting, but it’s anything but that.

That’s part of the beauty of not planning your road trip: you don’t know what you’re going to discover, and when you get there, even little surprises feel like finding treasure.

An antique fire truck finds its final resting place in Curlew near the Canadian border

Here are some examples of what we found today:

We set off toward the town of Curlew just a short distance from the Canadian border.  We’d been told it was a ghost town (it wasn’t – just a regular town with a restored hotel).  But on the way, we stumbled upon this eclectic “antiques” store.  No one was home, so we weren’t able to buy one of the rusty lumberjack tools or hundreds of lanterns, but it was fascinating to see what had collected over the years.

Next we headed to Sherman Pass (5587 ft.)and hiked among the dense forest of changing trees at the height of their fall color.

There seemed to be no end to the mountains and where there were breaks, picturesque farms and ranches dot the landscape.  The towns of Kettle Falls and Colville were home to more quintessential barns than anywhere we’d ever seen.

As soon as we left one town we entered another wilderness (this is where wolves have made a comeback in recent years).  Here’s a stop at Gilette Lake which felt like a time warp back to the 1950’s with it’s cozy rental cabins, fishing and lakeside camping.

We were within 20 miles of the Canadian border and made it as far east as Sandpoint, ID (home base for Schweitzer ski resort) which felt like a huge city after all the rural territory we’d seen.  It was also Ian’s 8th state in his short little life.

Mind blown, preconceived ideas totally forgotten, and a whole new respect for the diversity of the state achieved.