North Cascades National Park is named after the North Cascades Range and is nicknamed the "American Alps" because of its jagged, rocky mountain peaks and green slopes. This range has the largest glacial system in the US outside of Alaska, with over 300 glaciers. Surprisingly, this is one of the least visited national parks in the US. The area includes several lakes formed by dams that were put in place to provide hydro-electric power for the Seattle area.
Unfortunately for us, we visited on two rainy days with very low cloud cover, so we never got a view of the mountain peaks. Despite the rain, we found several good trails to hike: Skagit River Loop Trail (a 1.8-mile loop from the visitor center; top middle picture); Happy Creek Falls (2.7-mile out and back; top right picture); Ross Dam Trail (1.5 mile roundtrip; bottom left and large picture at top of page); Gorge Overlook Trail (0.8-mile loop; bottom middle picture) and Thunder Creek Trail (4-mile out and back to the suspension bridge; bottom right picture). Despite the rain and cloud cover, the area was beautiful and worth the trip. The Ross Dam Trail hike was particularly interesting, as the trail drops down from the overlook area on the highway through the forest to the top of Ross Dam, which you can walk across.
As for brew pubs, Birds Eye Brewing was about 45 minutes from the park. The food and drink there was worth the trip! Among the four of us, we tried their IPAs, blonde ale, and scotch ale and all were very good.
My daughter lived on the east side of North Cascades National Park, lived in Twisp and worked in Winthrop. We enjoyed visiting this park for three years in a row and always went to Diablo Lake. For those who find themselves in Twisp, try the Old Schoolhouse Brewery. Twisp is also the home to North Cascade Smokejumper Base, where you can get tours and gain insights to one of the Elite wildfire fighting groups in the West.