A Day in the Mountains

It wasn’t raining when we got up last Sunday morning. In fact there were patches of blue sky that showed promise for the day. “We should do something today,” Bob said, “Should we drive down the coast or into the mountains?” I opted for the mountains. I threw a couple of apples and a chocolate bar into a pack along with my birding binoculars and a camera. We left I-5 at the Mount Baker Highway exit, and headed east toward the northern Cascades.

It had been three years since we’d traveled this road, even before our move to Canada. We’d rented snowshoes at REI and planned a weekend of snowshoeing at Mount Baker. Now we watched for familiar sights along the 57-mile National Forest Scenic Byway that runs through the Nooksack Indian Reservation, past Christmas tree farms and horse-boarding ranches, and parallels the Nooksack River, a well-known salmon river. I can’t say that any of it looked familiar until we got to the little community of Glacier – population under one hundred. There’s the ski shop where I bought my wool knit cap. And there’s the grocery store owned by that young couple. And… there’s that old restaurant with the mahogany bar brought around the Horn and the huge wood-burning stove in the center of the room. So of course we decided to stop for lunch there.

Graham’s Restaurant is located in an old building that originally began as a general store in 1902. When we walk in the waitress says, “Grab a menu there next to the door and sit anywhere you want.” No problem with seating in the middle of the afternoon during the off-season. Their menus are unique… I mean the physical menu. It looks like a small town newspaper. There are headlines, historic photos, articles such as: “Sasquatch: Mysterious, Elusive, and Protected by Law,” “So You’ve Never Worked in a Restaurant Before,” and “People of the Ferns.” Printed boldly on the top right hand side of the front page… “Cash, and Canadian currency accepted.” (Some of you may not know how remarkable that statement is – we have been forced to use a credit card numerous times because neither cash nor Canadian currency, or even a debit card was accepted!!) Pages three through six contained the menu.

They have fun here. Under “Starters” is this: Wedgies Our well-trained, highly motivated, courteous staff will personally cook your potato wedgies in our well-equipped, massive kitchen. You can doctor up your wedgies with ketchup, sriracha, ranch or peanut butter (peanut butter is our least popular). The walls of the restaurant are decorated with miscellaneous antiques, old movie posters for the 1935 film “Call of the Wild,” and photos of Clark Gable and Loretta Young who starred in that film. Mount Baker was one of the filming locations. There is even a photo of Loretta Young warming her hands over the very same wood stove that warms the room where we sat to eat lunch.

We continued the drive, twisting up hairpin curves to the Mount Baker ski area. The ski lifts looked pretty lonely, hanging immobile over bare pavement and ground. Skiing by Thanksgiving may be an iffy proposition. But the 1998-99 snowfall season at Mt. Baker set a new record for the most snowfall ever measured in the United States in a single season - 1,140 inches.

We returned to Bellingham, promising ourselves that we would go back to Mount Baker and Glacier when the snow flies. We have our own snowshoes now, well used through two winters in northern B.C. On Monday, we heard from our friend Richard in Kitwanga, “Its been snowing for a good part of the night, we now have 6 inches of fresh heavy snow and still coming down like crazy.”

Photos: Mount Shuksan from Mount Baker, and Graham’s Restaurant

... PLM