Liberty Bell & Early Winter Spires
My friend, who is a climber, loves this area as the peaks here are easily accessible, at most just a few miles from the highway. In fact, on the trail to Blue Lake, we encountered mostly climbers in the parking lot on their way to climb Liberty Bell or Early Winter Spires, which are accessed from the same trailhead.
The light wasn't really good for photos at this time of the day, but hey, gotta work w/ what you've got!
The trail is pretty much a straightforward, gentle climb through the trees until it comes to a "meadow", which is basically an avalanche chute as the broken trees can attest. There are views back towards the highway of other peaks to the S. Check out that green meadow towards the left!
A family of 3 climbers were hiking ahead of us. The youngest was around 10 years old, and they were on their way to climb Liberty Bell! Pretty amazing!
Finally you arrive at an outlet stream of Blue Lake and the first thing we saw was an old cabin. It's hard to know how old it is, but there was evidence of the areas mining past scattered around.
Pano:
It's amazing to me to think of old prospectors living up here all alone and before much settlement or exploration this way. The North Cascades highway we had been driving on all week was only completed in 1972. Even though the route had been used for thousands of years by Native Americans for trade w/ the Pacific Coast, it took almost 80 years to complete a road across this rugged landscape.
The lake was still thinly frozen over.
We spent some time lounging in the sun, enjoying the rare opportunity to be basking in nature on a weekday.
The water must've been near freezing, but we could see fish swimming around, occasionally jumping to snag a mosquito.
There's no camping at the lake, but it would be easy to imagine sitting there for a long time.
We did, actually. Then it was time to journey onward.
We got back to the car and headed East, towards the town of, get this: Mazama, WA.
Noteworthy, according to Wikipedia: "Locally, the name is pronounced to rhyme with "Alabama": /mə.ˈzæm.ə/ mə-zam-ə. This is not the same as Oregon’s Mount Mazama, pronounced with a broader central vowel: /mə.ˈzɑː.mə/ mə-zah-mə."
We stopped here for a swim in the aptly named Early Winter Creek, and when we had been chilled enough, we continued on to the town of Winthrop, WA. Winthrop is another of those themed towns like Leavenworth, WA where the city council got together back in the 70's as they new Hwy 20 was being completed and tried to find a way to boost tourism. What better way than to remodel the entire town to look like some other place?
Winthrop was a thriving metropolis on this afternoon. Many foreign speaking tourists decked out in Helly Hansen, were standing in line for ice cream, scurrying to buy leather handbags, etc. 
It looks like an old Western town, but alas, it's completely fake!
This town is as fake as my muscles!:
We had a real meal at Old Schoolhouse Brewery downtown and then continued driving, hoping to find a spot to camp for the evening near Twisp, WA.
Continued in Part 4....
) The premier backpack I did is upcoming in part 5 - Phelps Creek Trail to Spider Gap. Stay tuned! 
There are so many good ones up there, but b/c it was mid-June and there was still snow above 6000', I didn't commit to do any of them as most involve crossing multiple high passes and/or raging rivers. I would recommend the book "Backpacking Washington" by Craig Romano, which has many multi-day trips in the North Cascades that you can do now that the snow is definitely on its way out.