Cle Elum Lake, Roslyn, and Lake Easton State Park

Friday 9/21/2012

While in Easton, we took a short drive to see Cle Elum Lake. To get there we went through the town of Ronald, established in 1881 or 1885 I can't read the number on the picture. Anyway Ronald is an old coal mining town that is a few miles from the town of Roslyn. ( Joe will tell you more about Roslyn furter in this blog). If you blink, you might miss the town of Ronald. It's population is 265.

We pulled into the Wenatchee National Forest /Boat Launching/ Wish-Poosh, after going through Ronald to get a view of Cle Elum Lake.

The haze from the forest fires was so bad that it was hard to get a good picture.

This was the boat launch area. You could see that the lake was way down from the drought the the country had this year.

At the north end of the lake, was a campground in the Wenatchee National Forest called Cle Elum River Campground. This is a no hook up campground without a dump station. A single site cost $16 a night and a double site cost $32. The campground sat next to Cle Elum River and was a nice campground if you don't mind no amenities.

We headed back down the road along Cle Elum Lake. This picture shows how low the lake water level was. This section of the lake was completely dry except for the stream running to the lake.

A better picture of the low water level of the lake.

Looking south from about the middle of the lake.



There were a few homes being built on the mountainside with views of the lake.



We drove up one of the roads to see what kind of view you would get of the lake. Looking north, we could see where someone had bought a lot and had their trailer on it.

This particular lot was a 3 acres lot.

It was lot 6 and the asking price was $160,000. We found a lot we liked better, but there was no for sale sign on it, so it probably was sold already.

After dreaming of a piece of property on a lake we drove toward home and stopped at the town of Roslyn. Joe took all the pictures in Roslyn, so I am going to turn the blog over to him, and let him tell you about the town.

This is Joe. This town is the town used in filming the TV series Northern Exposure. It was about a town who paid for a medical student's school expenses but he had to come to this town in Alaska and be the town's only doctor for a few years. No this isn't Alaska,, but the TV audience didn't know that. This picture shows the town's bar that was very popular in the show.

 

It is called The Brick.

This is the look inside.

Across the street you see the old store fronts that made for a perfect backdrop for the TV show.

This town has some famous paintings on the sides of the buildings..

A youong James Dean. Needs some touching up at the bottom.

This famous cafe was also popular in the TV show.

 Roslyn use to be a mining town. Today 4/5's of the coal deposits remain unmined.

From Roslyn we drove into the town of Cle Elum for groceries. Just east of  Cle Elum, 70 homes were lost to fire from a fire here a month ago.

After we got home Joe ran across the street to get what he called a heart attack burger. He said he had seen it advertised in our resort club house on a bulletin board. I passed on the burger, and had a more healthy dinner.

It did look real good, so Joe gave me a bite of his. It was really good, but I was glad I passed on all those calories.

Mallery knew Joe had something real good also.

"Please daddy, can I have a bite also".

Of course he shared a small bite. But then she wanted more.

                                     Saturday 9/22/2012

The next day we drove into the Lake Easton State Park which was located right next to our campground..

Here are the prices for the campground.

The campground was a really nice one.

The sites were paved, but Joe was concerned about getting a satellite signal amoungst all these trees.

If you are blessed, you might get one of the few lake view spots.

Below the campground is the playground,

and a picnic area in front of the lake.

There was also a small beach next to the picnic area. Beings it was late September, there were few sunbathers.



Looking east on the lake. The lake is relatively small.

Monday 9/23/2012

The next day we drove to the lake that is west of Cle Elum Lake, named Lake Kachess. Unfortunately the road on the east side of the lake was gravel. We drove to the south end of the lake slowly because this road in washboard ruff in many places. This lake also had very low water levels

We headed back home since the road around the lake was so rough. I wanted to go to a town north of us called  Leavenworth, which I was told was a cute Bavarian town, but the road to it was closed due to the forest fires in the area.

We are currently in Sundance, Wyoming, which is off I-90 on the east side of Wyoming. We will be here for 2 nights to give Joe a break from driving and to do some siteseeing.