All summer we took bear precautions, and now this?Copyright 2007 Lydia Hinshaw
QUINCY, WA -- Ravens are smart animals, so there must be a good reason why one of them keeps damaging the windshield wipers of visitors to North Cascades National Park.
In this part of North Cascades, more often than not, it's raining or snowing. Perhaps the bird just likes tourists so much he wants them to stay around. Without proper wipers, they can't safely leave. And the closest auto parts store is probably 60 miles away.
In Denali, climbers attempting Mount McKinley must stay on guard constantly to keep ravens from finding and pillaging their food supplies. Perhaps they could distract the birds by leaving some wiper blades lying around.
Anyhow, once we saw this notice posted in the visitors' center, we didn't hang around long. It was raining, of course. We didn't see the raven, but reading about him gave us a chuckle on a dreary day.
Thursday morning we left Anacortes in the rain and set out on what is supposed to be a scenic route through North Cascades, but we couldn't see much of anything because of the low clouds.
The weather turned sunny when we started down the east side of the mountains, which is typical. We had lunch in a wild-west-themed town called Winthrop, and then headed for Wenatchee.
I once met some bicyclists from Wenatchee and they talked about the place as if it were heaven on earth -- a pleasant small town on the Columbia River, in a beautiful setting and boasting 300 days of sunshine per year.
That was 10 years ago. The weather and the scenery lived up to billing, but Wenatchee is one more traffic-choked city filled with the usual chain restaurants and big box stores.
We stayed only until we could find our way back out of town and fled here to two-stoplight Quincy, where we're staying in a motel that smells like fertilizer. We can live with that, since the free wi-fi works so well.
This is a fruit, flower and wine region. We'll shop for apples and pears and peaches tomorrow.
In this part of North Cascades, more often than not, it's raining or snowing. Perhaps the bird just likes tourists so much he wants them to stay around. Without proper wipers, they can't safely leave. And the closest auto parts store is probably 60 miles away.
In Denali, climbers attempting Mount McKinley must stay on guard constantly to keep ravens from finding and pillaging their food supplies. Perhaps they could distract the birds by leaving some wiper blades lying around.
Anyhow, once we saw this notice posted in the visitors' center, we didn't hang around long. It was raining, of course. We didn't see the raven, but reading about him gave us a chuckle on a dreary day.
Thursday morning we left Anacortes in the rain and set out on what is supposed to be a scenic route through North Cascades, but we couldn't see much of anything because of the low clouds.
The weather turned sunny when we started down the east side of the mountains, which is typical. We had lunch in a wild-west-themed town called Winthrop, and then headed for Wenatchee.
I once met some bicyclists from Wenatchee and they talked about the place as if it were heaven on earth -- a pleasant small town on the Columbia River, in a beautiful setting and boasting 300 days of sunshine per year.
That was 10 years ago. The weather and the scenery lived up to billing, but Wenatchee is one more traffic-choked city filled with the usual chain restaurants and big box stores.
We stayed only until we could find our way back out of town and fled here to two-stoplight Quincy, where we're staying in a motel that smells like fertilizer. We can live with that, since the free wi-fi works so well.
This is a fruit, flower and wine region. We'll shop for apples and pears and peaches tomorrow.
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