Following the Yellowstone Trail to the Red Brick Road

 

By October 6, we had been on the road for a week. We had camped nearly every night across Montana, Idaho and Washington. These nights were spent in a primitive, yet cozy tent trailer. We did not have water in the trailer and all of the electricity, when we had electricity, was furnished via an extension cord. One night we used an electric heater inside the trailer on other nights we relied on our warm sleeping bags. 

We decided to spend the night of October 6 in a motel in Wenatchee. Not only would staying in a motel be a welcome rest, but it would give us a chance to recharge our batteries, both our personal batteries and the ones for the electronic devices. They were spent too.

On the morning of October 7 we left the motel and began the climb toward Stevens Pass. We were on U.S. Highway 2. We soon left the orchards and rich farmland of the Wenatchee Valley behind. The road was not crowded, but it was winding so we settled in and enjoyed the spectacular scenery. The fall colors were as good as or better than those in Montana.

                       

The first town we came to was Leavenworth. Leavenworth began life as a railroad town along the Great Northern Railroad. When the railroad was no longer providing a stable economic foundation for the town, it reinvented itself as a Bavarian village. It's number one industry now is tourism. We were driving through as the town was getting ready for Oktoberfest tourists, but it was early enough in the morning that we were not slowed down and we did not stop to enjoy the sights. We've been to Leavenworth before, and we will visit again.

After cresting the pass we began the long descent towards the Puget Sound area. At Snohomish, we left Highway 2 and drove towards Redmond, Washington. We were in search of "The Old Red Brick Road" which was paved with bricks in 1913 and is a part of the Yellowstone Trail. The instructions for getting to the road were not good. One device took us to Kirkland. It was actually a train store we ended up at - (really Bill?  It was a former trip when we were in the area last year.) Another said it was in the town of Bothell, while another tried to take us to Everett and yet another set of directions led us to Redmond. I even stopped at the Bothell City Hall where I was stopped by signs indicating that the area was under quarantine due to Covid 19.
I spoke with a nice woman on the phone that works for the city and she told me that there is a "Red Brick Rd., Park" in the city but that she wasn't sure if the Red Brick Road was there. It was not.  We ultimately found it and it turns out that it is 196th Avenue Northeast in Redmond. We drove the mile-long section of "The Red Brick Road" and took some pictures. There is a nice interpretive sign at the beginning of the road in Redmond. The Yellowstone Trail is prominently mentioned.

 The history and significance of "The Red Brick Road" started before it had bricks and before 1913. In 1909 the transcontinental race from Boston to Seattle drove on this street as it was nearing the finish. The race was won by a model T Ford. Henry Ford was on hand to witness the end of the race.

We then went to search for the end of the trail. That proved

easier to find than the 2 1/2 hour search for the "Old Red Brick Road". As it turns out the Yellowstone Trail ends at Pioneer Square, near the ferry terminal in Seattle. This proved easy to find and in a short 25 minutes we were at "The End of the Trail". In one sense this finishes our travel diary. It began in 2017 in Boise, foundered in San Francisco and then traveled the Lincoln Highway to Times Square in New York City, where we drove north to Plymouth Rock. At Plymouth Rock we began our trip west on the Yellowstone Trail. The Yellowstone Trail proved very difficult to follow many times. But by and large it truly is "A Good Road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound".

Tomorrow we will start our trip home. We are not giving up on the Yellowstone Trail. We will drive the 1913 route through Yakima, and the Tri-Cities. At that point we will part with the Yellowstone Trail in drive Interstate 84 back to Boise.

This trip has been a great and grand adventure. We met a lot of people all of them friendly and helpful. There was not a "stinker" in the bunch. The last part of the trip, from Yellowstone Park to Puget Sound was delayed for three years for a number of reasons. One of these reasons was that I thought this portion of the road might be anticlimactic. It wasn't. The route through Western Montana and the search for the red brick road in western Washington proved to be to the most scenic and rewarding portions of the entire trip.