After returning to Seattle from our Alaska cruise, we picked up our rental SUV at the airport and drove for more than six hours to Spokane, Washington where we spent two nights. The drive along U.S. Route 2 in Washington was perhaps the most scenic American roadway I have been on thus far in my life. We traveled northeast from Seattle and hooked up with U.S. Route 2 in Monroe and then followed that straight to Spokane. We seldom left this highway, traversing a landscape that changed dramatically from region to region. It was as beautiful and mesmerizing as it was perplexing. U.S. Route 2 spans 2,571 miles across the northern continental United States. The highway consists of two segments on either side of a portion of Canada. The western segment stretches from Everett, Washington all the way to Ignace, Michigan; the eastern portion runs from Rouses Point, New York to Houlton, Maine. This is the northernmost east-west highway in the country, and I can't speak for all of it, but the portion that runs through the State of Washington was so beautiful I couldn't stop photographing it from our SUV. Beginning in the Cascade Mountains, the highway makes its way through valleys of hilly evergreen forests before climbing up Stevens Pass (a mountain pass that reaches over 4,000 feet in elevation) and then continues east, crossing the Columbia River at Wenatchee. Before reaching Spokane, this roadway took us through a fascinating series of changing landscapes that blended into one another, from majestic mountain ranges and forests to shrub lands, deserts and steep coulees to flat farmlands. We were completely blown away by the sheer beauty of this section of the American northwest. Below is a collection of photographs taken on this drive.