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Small car meet & drive to a frozen lake: Great scenery and good food

1st December 2023, 16:34 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

I was driving my BMW X3 M40i and giving me company were 2 other cars - a Toyota Highlander and a Subaru Forester.

BHPian mobike008 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I have this unusual bug of driving (I'm sure most of us here have this bug) but, I seem to suffer from it a little more than average.

I feel like doing a drive every few weeks to some exotic location (Washington is filled with them and it makes the drive urges go up like nothing that I can explain). I would like to tick every possible place that is worth visiting in Washington.

The best part is that all exotic locales in Washington are "Day Drives" and maximum of 150 miles one-way which means we can reach that destination in 3 hours of driving at the maximum.

I may have covered about 70% of the major attractions already in Washington and some of them warrant going back at least 2-3 times a year (Landscapes change drastically during each season- Summers, Fall and Winters)

With that said, I kickstarted another beautiful drive plan for November 18, 2023.

I keep track of all beautiful locations from a local blog- Life in Northwest Washington. I saw there that “Picture Lake” in the North Cascade Mountains already received a lot of snow (winter hasn’t even started for us yet) and I was getting an urge to visit the snow-capped mountains so I set a plan in motion.

Initially, there were 6 cars who confirmed to join and on D-day, it dropped to only 3 folks who showed up.

The plan was simple:

Drive up north for 100 miles and visit the frozen “Picture Lake” in Mt. Baker area which is part of the North Cascades Mountain range.
Spend a few hours enjoying the view at the location.
Drive back home and en route stop for a late lunch.

Weather gods also gave us full support, it was 0 Celsius but, sunny throughout the day.

Folks who joined:

Mobike008 (BMW X3M40i)
Crackhead (Toyota Highlander)
Ram (Non BHPIan but, joins most of our drives in his Subaru Forester)

We decided to meet at a Chic-a-fil at a location up north at around 9:00am. We enjoyed a quick breakfast on the bonnet of the Highlander.

Left the breakfast location at 9:30am and drove north on I-5 for about 30 miles and then detoured into the B-roads. Here is where the fun started.

Me and Crackhead enjoyed some spirited driving in the hills for the 50-odd miles through some beautiful, curvy and hilly roads.

We reached Picture Lake around 11'sh and spent a couple of hours exploring the area.

Picture Lake was completely frozen and after thoroughly testing the shore area, we decided to walk on the frozen lake for a few feet inside which was a surreal feeling. Imagine this used to be water just some weeks ago.

Around here, there were a bunch of small birds who would come and sit on your hand if you stretched it out. It was super cool!

Around 1:00pm, we decided to head out and as per Crackhead’s suggestion, we stopped at Aslan Brewery in Bellingham, WA (near the Canada Border) for an amazing lunch. I’m usually not impressed with food easily as most places dish out just average food. But, this place was really good and I already planned to visit here again for its awesome ambience and delicious food.

After spending an hour on lunch, I split early as I needed to get home so I clipped my way home for the rest of the 50 miles to reach home around 5:30pm.

That’s how a beautiful day drive ended where the food complimented the amazing scenery that we witnessed during the day.

Enjoy the pictures. Cheers!

A few pictures of scenery en route and drive to the destination.

Out of the 100 miles, about 70 miles were through the mountains and the last stretch of 20 miles was through a winter wonderland as we kept climbing the top.

Even though there was not much snow (this place will completely change from January to April with 3-4 feet of snow everywhere) as winters are just setting in, it was pleasant to be visiting at this time as you can walk around due to less snow.