RV Travels With Huggy

Huggy has been here now for a bit over three days. All three cats are still healthy and they have actually been known to spend a little time in the same room. But there is also still hissing & growling, too. It is looking like it will work out but may take a little longer than we had hoped for.

Pat & I didn't try to go anywhere after the wedding on Sat. April 28th but on the morning of the 29th we drove her diesel powered VW New Beetle across Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains on US 2 to the Bavarian themed town of Leavenworth. On the way I had to make a stop at The Alps. That is the chocolate and gift store 6 miles or so west of Leavenworth. We of course made some purchases. Pat collects toads among other things and they had a good collection of toad things.


Here Pat is looking over part of their toad items.

Leavenworth was originally a railroad town but when the RR closed down their northern route over the Cascades it looked like the town might die. Someone who lived there had recently visited the Bavarian area of Germany and noticed how similar the landscape was. They suggested that the town re-invent itself as a Bavarian village and go after the tourist market. They have been pretty successful.


This photo shows a few rooftops but also some of the foothills that surround the town. This was a photo taken in the morning when the clouds were still hanging around in the air from the 4th floor of our hotel.


This view looks upriver over a home, up the Wenatchee River. There were power line wires running across the house that I felt kind of spoiled the clean look of the area so I took them out in Photoshop.


Here are some of the buildings in the town. We ate dinner our first night there at Gustav's. It had good German food at reasonable prices but we felt it really was more of a lunch type menu than dinner.


Just a few miles east of Leavenworth on US 2 is the town of Cashmere. One of it's most famous products is a fruit candy called Applets & Cotlets. We visited the factory and it's sales area. Here is Pat at the cash register while the sales lady rings up our $60 plus order. We like the stuff and bought quite a bit. We are still eating the peanut brittle. Of course Pat has me on a limited quantity of that type of stuff which is good as I am still loosing weight. Sloooowly.


Here is another street scene in Leavenworth. This is not the US highway but is the main street through the village. Vehicle traffic is not much of a problem here. Our hotel was only about three blocks from the downtown area so we just walked over.


This is the Enzian Inn where we stayed, in a twilight photo. The area on the 4th floor with the big windows on the right of the photo is the dining area where we ate our free buffet breakfast each morning. The balcony in front of the dining room is also where I took some photos of the landscape as well of the alphorn player:


This fellow plays this horn from the railing along the edge of that 4th floor balcony at various times of the day. He also came inside the dining area to play it a bit.


This shows a part of the inside lobby. The upper lobby is where Pat is standing, the stairs at the right side go down to the main floor. The big chandelier is in the near foreground and above the lobby. Behind the chandelier, on the ground floor, you can just see the grand piano which is played for an hour and a half every evening by various musicians.


Doesn't Pat look a bit like a kid in a candy store in this photo? We were in a few candy stores but I don't think this was one of them, but there are a lot of places that give you many opportunities to buy things. It is kind of a shoppers paradise and even has two Christmas stores that offer Christmas decorations all year.

We spent two nights in Leavenworth and then decided that since we are retired we didn't really have to be back home on any specific day. The North Cascades Highway had opened the week before (it is closed all winter as they don't even try to remove the 50+ feet of snow that builds up there) so we thought we would go north to Winthrop, another of my favorite towns, with a Western theme. Winthrop is on the eastern side of the North Cascade Hwy (Wash. SR 20) and we thought we could spend that night there. On our way we stopped in Manson, near Chelan, for lunch with our friends R & D C who helped so much on various things with our wedding, including many of the photos.

Well, we got to Winthrop and found there were no rooms available! It seems that a chain group of stores had taken them all for employees to hold a retreat or something like that. We did a little shopping but only about half of the stores were open. This town pretty much closes down in the winter while it's residents go south where it is warmer, then they reopen shortly after the pass roadway opens. It did get opened a couple of weeks earlier than they thought it would so some of them were probably caught a bit by surprise and were not back to town yet.


Here is the Winthrop Emporium, one of the places that was open. We did have dinner at 3-Fingered Jack's before hitting the road to cross the pass. I wish we had thought to give Pat one of the cameras to take some photos of the road at Washington Pass, but we didn't so I have none to show here. But the snow along the sides of the road was piled up about 12 feet over the top of the car! The road was bare and dry so the driving was easy but there sure was a lot of snow. We had no trouble and light traffic, so stopped for nachos when back to our town before going home.

The Beetle went about 500 miles, used 3/4 tank of diesel fuel and averaged 42 miles per gallon. This isn't bad for a car with an automatic transmission. Our little Honeymoon trip was short but sweet. We will take some longer trips with the motorhome before long as my house is almost ready to list for sale.

Labels: Pat and I, Photos, Trips to see things, Wedding