Over the Hills We Go...

Today I took a nice little day trip over Steven's Pass (elevation 4,000 ft) on Highway 2 to Leavenworth, WA. It's a cozy little tourist town, and very fun to visit. My friend had something to pick up from someone she knew there, so she made a day of it, and invited me along!

It was glorious driving through the Cascades... dark green firs and pines lined with reds and yellows of other trees mixed among them. I was able to gawk at the scenery the whole way, because my friend drove us. It took us just about two hours to get there. Leavenworth is a "Bavarian" themed town. Even McDonald's looks classy! It's a town ordinance that all the buildings be themed to fit. After meeting her friend, we had salad and bratwurst with kraut at a great little place called the "Soup Cellar" for lunch. And after emerging from the cellar, we took a horse & carriage ride through the town on the spur of the moment. Very nice!

We poked around in quite a few little shops... I found a really neat knight figurine, and at a sidewalk art stand, I picked up a beautiful landscape photo of the region in brilliant fall color. We then visited the Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum and store... with most pieces direct from Germany! They had things other than nutcrackers - this reminded me of Linda: ---------------- This of Mike:












...and this of Rodney (don't worry Rodney, it's just because of the types of movies you like). LOL!


They didn't let you take pictures in the museum itself, but I wish I could have! It had 5,000 different nutcrackers from all over the world... ranging from fancy metal ones from 1600's Europe, to Spiderman. There was a whole set of "A Christmas Carol" nutcrackers... I especially liked the Ghost of Christmas Present. This is besides the many, many different "Nutcracker" nutcrackers... in fact, when you walked in the door, there was a 6 foot tall Mouse King nutcracker. It's impossible to recall them all... there were American Civil War nutcrackers (from Europe), Star Wars nutcrackers, nutcrackers from Austria, Russia, the US, Ireland, England, France and others. They even had carved walnuts. This place was incredible!

After our tour of nutcrackers, Becky and I went hiking... or more appropriately, we went searching for the trail. The website didn't warn us that the road to the trail-head was washed out 3 miles from the start of the trail. So we parked the car and then went a mile on this little roundabout walking trail that ended up back on the road on the other side of the washout. And then we kept going on the road for about 2 miles. Becky spotted a deer right near us once! And on our way back a few minutes later, we saw it again, and I got within 10 yds! By this time it was about 7 pm, and our light was fading fast. We were in the dark for the last little side trail, and I was relieved to find that there weren't any cougars or bears running around those parts. Lions, Tigers and Bears... oh, my! So I'm making a habit about going about in strange places in the dark... this is not good.


We decided to have a bit of ice cream before leaving Leavenworth, so we stopped in for some gelato. I was bold, and had strawberry. :)

The trip back was uneventful, besides the occasional slow truck or van. I was falling asleep by the time we got to Monroe, which is just when you get back to civilization. It was neat to see all those stars on the way, though. When we were leaving the trail-head at 7:30, when it was just past dusk, the only thing I could see at first was Jupiter... and a little more than half the moon.

Jp