Further up the Entiat Valley, as light rain began to fall, we turned off at Shady Pass Road, intending to cross over to Lake Chelan on the other side. This road was rougher than we bargained for near the top, just to where we would have turned back had it been any worse. At about 4,200' we started to see some very interesting Arctostaphylos, including this very bizarre plant. The leaves and fruit were like A. uva-ursi but with gigantic proportions! It also had a very open growth habit with a tendency for branches to stick straight up rather than being prostrate, although it was still only 8” tall. I suspect there are some A. patula genes in there somewhere, as it is known to occur along Lake Chelan. Who knows, more searching could turn up some A. patula in the Entiat Valley? Also found in abundance here were some very nice forms of Paxistima myrsinites, mountain boxwood (not pictured).

At 5,100' we came to a bewildering hybrid swarm of Arctostaphylos with characteristics intermediate between A. patula, A. nevadensis and A. uva-ursi but with no plants clearly matching either.

There's no way this plant is A. uva-ursi, and it's even too tall for a typical A. nevadensis!

This one, another ambiguous A. nevadensis/uva-ursi type, made a beautiful, dense carpet of narrow green leaves.

Higher and higher the road climbed, into ghostly silver forests of burned up trees.

Around 6,000' we found numerous Rhododendron albiflorum (Cascade azalea) with considerable variation in fall coloration.

Finally topping out at 6,500' we descended slightly catching a few heart-jolting views of Lake Chelan WAAAY below. And a view the opposite direction from the same spot. Hi Madelin. (Poor little car.)

At 6,100' we came upon this sagebrush which can only be Artemisia tridentata subsp. vaseyana (mountain sagebrush). Artemisia tridentata is supposed to be rather difficult to root from cuttings, but one has to try since I don't think anyone will be back here in December to collect seed of it when they are ripe! Anyway, if I followed the books when it came to what can be propagated from cuttings I would have far fewer plants.

We were fortunate that the sky cleared and the road improved for our trip down towards Lake Chelan.

I took this picture because there's just something about pictures of burned up trees, if you know what I mean.

At 6,000' we found this Penstemon in plenty. There are so many of them and I am not a Penstemon expert, so I will probably wait until it flowers to figure out just what it is. But we can already tell it is a great plant, it looks very nice and was obviously covered with flowers!

We also found this Heuchera cylindrica, a nice native plant that is widespread in central Washington. At this point we were sort of hurrying along to try to make it to Chelan before dark, but we hope to have a chance to explore this area more in the future. I think there may have been quite a bit more in the way of interesting plants away from the road.

Finally after passing through some amazingly dense thickets of Ceanothus velutinus, and (disappointingly) not seeing any Arctostaphylos other than what looked very much like flat forms of A. nevadensis/uva-ursi on the descent (I was really hoping to find some true A. patula in this area), we made it back to Lake Chelan where it was mostly sunny and perhaps 70 degrees just before Sunset. We got dinner and ice cream at a wonderful little restaurant in Chelan called Sojourners, which I recommend very highly (and no that's not a paid announcement)!

For the final day of our trip, we stopped off at our friend Dixie Dringman's place in Rock Island to talk cacti and exchange a few plants. A serious cactus and succulent enthusiast and card carrying skull collector (not really), Dixie believes strongly in sharing information just as we do.

It was a pleasant but cloudy day possibly topping out around 70°F as we moved along, taking a break for lunch in Quincy. We then headed towards Vantage stopping for these views of the Columbia River from I-90. This time though we did not stop in Vantage, although it is a great place to look for Pediocactus nigrispinus, hedgehog cactus, and possibly one of our native cacti, Opuntia columbiana. Instead we moved on to the Yakima River Canyon to look for Opuntia columbiana, but we did not find any and it was getting late so we had to give up the search and go home. I always seem to have bad luck here: this is the fourth time I have searched the Yakima Canyon for cacti and found nothing although I have heard from several trusted sources they are supposed to be there. I may need to give it a whole day or two in the future, and come in the spring when the cacti are in bloom and more conspicuous.

For our final stop we located an isolated grove of Quercus garryana northwest of Thorp. Like Acer macrophyllum this is chiefly considered a Western Washington (and western Oregon) tree and not a lot of people are aware it occurs in, or even is hardy in, central Washington. Yet here they are in an area where record lows bottom out at -30°F.

Madelin says this was her favorite part of the trip. Then we got in the car and started home, just moments before it began raining!

All in all this was an enjoyable and successful trip. With a couple of exceptions, we found most of what we are looking for, and nothing bad happened (that's always nice, isn't it?). We also highlighted a few areas we might want to return to for further exploration. We might have gone farther up the Mad River, where we turned around at the Ceanothus prostratus. And there are many more roads in the foothills around Chelan that are certain to yield interesting plants. I guess we will have to go back again soon!