Enchantment Lakes

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Took Molly’s advice and headed to the Enchantment Lakes region in Washington. The permits are limited so you have to go to a 7am lottery, which forced us to have one of our first mornings waking up to an alarm clock all trip. But we arrived for the lottery and there were just enough permits for everyone wanting to go up that day - hurray! We packed up, and hit the trail in the blazing sun. The town we left from (Leavenworth, a funny Bavarian-themed touristy town) had temperatures predicted to be over 100 that day. We sweat buckets on the way up - all 5800’ of elevation gain. But the grunt hike was well worth it - the scenery was spectacular! The first of the ‘Enchantment Lakes’, Lake Viviane, was beautiful and we decided to camp there - enough hiking for that day! We set up the tent, and soon learned that the warning about bugs we’d gotten was an understatement. The mosquitoes were vicious - amazingly numerous and bitey little bastards. We had to squat out in the tent to avoid their onslaught. We still managed to get easily over a hundred bites just leaving to cook dinner, etc. Good thing the scenery was worth putting up with the bugs! Soon after we set up camp, we met our first of many mountain goat friends. A nice group lives up by the camp, and are particularly enamored with human pee. Your waste is their treasure. Apparently it’s like a glorious salt lick for them. Once you get over the fact that it's gross, you appreciate how it allows you great views of the goats! They had little fear of humans and would come very close. One was sniffing at our camera, seemed about it knock it off the rock it was sitting on, so I had to reprimand her “She-goat, no!” and she listened and moved along to lick at a glorious pee patch. We stayed up there another day, exploring the chain of Enchantment Lakes (Leprechaun, Perfection, Inspiration - you get the idea). One was better than the next. And as long as we were moving we could outrun the bugs… Our last morning, we got to meet two baby goats and a big group of adult goats hanging out together. They even crossed a stream over a log (one baby goat was too scared and was bleating for its mom, who’d crossed without it, but another baby goat went for it - scared at first, then just galloped across, hoping for the best). After enjoying our morning communion with the goats, we hauled ass down the trail, and made good time as it was all downhill. Headed from there to a campground where we could catch a nearby ferry to the Olympic Peninsula. All good, except for the poor baby at the next campsite that literally cried about 10 of the 12 hours we were there. Thank goodness for earplugs!

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