Peter Garrison hits the road in a Mazda RX-8 and sees what the mountains offer

It was a gamble. Washington in mid-October can be a magnificent canvas of blue skies and fall colors among the evergreens; it is equally likely to be a dripping, monochromatic mess. As our airliner descended through 10,000 feet of cloud, it looked as though it was going to be a mess. The weatherman thought so too; he was calling for rain, heavy at times, as far as the satellite eye could see. Approaching Sea-Tac, we looked sadly to the east; it was bright there with the last glow of the good weather that had prevailed right up to our arrival.

Oh, well. My co-pilot and I snuggled into the bucket seats of a cobalt-blue Mazda RX-8 and crossed our fingers. And for the time being at least, our luck seemed to be holding: Pregnant-looking clouds sailed overhead threatening precipitation, but no rain to speak of fell.

Our first stop was the Salish Lodge, perched on the brink of 270-foot Snoqualmie Falls. We approached the lodge via exit 22 from I-90, through the town of Fall City. We didn't know it until later, but that route preserves the illusion that the falls are in a wild and isolated place. If you come to them from exit 25, you'll probably think the falls are an artificial addition to a sprawling upscale housing development.

In Snoqualmie Falls, sight lines are important. There's a dingy old power station right across the river from the lodge, so you don't want to look that way for too long. For the best view, you have to descend the steep river path, which winds through a lovely rain forest, squeezes past a second power station, and finally leads you to a tree-surrounded platform on stilts 20 feet above the river. From here no building other than the lodge can be seen, and it is inconspicuous. The waterfall itself, 100 feet higher than Niagara, looks nothing like those cheesy photos in which a long exposure turns moving water to a foggy whitish glow. No, Snoqualmie Falls is a finely detailed, ever-varying, infinitely fascinating thing. Its ragged veils and meteors of water, falling in an endless fractal dance, held me staring like some hypnotized acid-tripper. I could barely tear myself away.

Day 1: Snoqualmie Falls to Leavenworth, 115 miles
Our plan is to drive the "Cascades Loop" in a counterclockwise direction, crossing the mountains east of Seattle by the southern highway, Route 2, and returning by the northern one, Route 20, a few miles south of the Canadian border. The Cascades are a spectacular mountain range, young, uneroded, jagged, and sheer enough to more than make up in spectacle what they lack in breadth or height. You see right away how they got their name; rainwater wrung out of Pacific westerlies by the mountains' sudden upthrust tumbles down their flanks in countless waterfalls, some of them big and conspicuous enough to be named, others just slender white threads far up towering crags. Some of the mountains are so steep, so inaccessible, that they look unreal, like illustrations in a fantasy novel.