Some pictures from today (Saturday)


 After the ordeal with my phone, we were able to get on the road before noon. As the desert of western Idaho/eastern Oregon turned into the vineyards of the Yakima River Valley, WA., the intermittent rain disbursed and turned into a beautiful sunny day. As we crested one ridge we could clearly make out the southern edge of the Cascade Mountains on the horizon (above).

Other than gasoline refills, our only planned stop for today was a Bavarian village in the mountains of Washington State that hides on the map under the name of Leavenworth, WA.

Alicia tends to the goats

Unique signs and a wide variety of shops/stores line the pedestrian-only Main Street of Leavenworth.


Everyone knows I’m all about exploring new local food offerings, so while we were in Bavaria we decided to eat. I went for the “Hamburg”er with cheese apparently from Switzerland. (The Mushroom wasn’t Bavarian, it was left over from the Iditarod in Alaska. I believe it is the German word for Musher’s Room.)





The walls of the restaurant were literally covered with paper money, some US dollars, others in denominations from various countries around the world, all signed and taped to the walls by visitors to this Bavarian town.

And in the park we found live entertainment, featuring authentic Glockensielists. (Sure, that’s a real word).


Tomorrow we head across the Canadian border, eh? Destination is a nice hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Monday morning we will be transported to our site-seeing train.


 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

(With apologies to Paul Harvey…) The Rest of the Story

Image
 It appears that Alicia has gone to social media quicker than I’ve been able to respond to her request to tell the story. But, for what it’s worth… Alicia had been feeling “under the weather”, as they say, for the last couple days, culminating in a (very expensive) visit to the emergency room in Jasper, Alberta. I know my wife has a tendency to allow her mental state to derail her attitude when she doesn’t physically feel well. She wasn’t eating, she wasn’t drinking, she had a killer headache. In short she wasn’t drinking downright miserable. Because we were in Lake Louise at an elevation she was not used to I figured she needed and altitude attitude adjustment, something to cheer her up. While she was spending our entire “down day” (which had nothing at all to do with Canadian goose feathers) in bed, I wandered over to the Jasper National Park lodge and did some window shopping. When I spotted a flower shop downstairs I knew what needed to happen. Karen, who, if she isn’t the shop...
Read more

A trip worth gauking about

Image
 We were up very early this morning to catch the bus from the hotel to the train station by 7 am. The Rocky Mountaineer is performing in their 35th year and the whole operation has been very smooth and well orchestrated.  We had “checked in” yesterday to confirm we had made it, and not been delayed by any of life’s little worries… like broken sprinkler heads or road raged hit-and-run drivers. As a result they knew which room We had stayed in and had us leave our suitcases in the room, taking only the items we would need while in transit today. After getting on the bus, they had people come and pick up our luggage for us. It would be transported to Kamloops, BC (where we are staying tonight) by truck and waiting for us in our room when we arrived. Our car featured large windows on each side and above those windows were additional windows that extended our field of vision to mountain tops that would ordinarily be out of view. We had (they estimated) about 50 people in our car an...
Read more

The (nearly) Final Chapter

Image
 The final travel day for our Rocky Mountaineer train trip was to be a challenge for me as the route was identical to (albeit the reverse of) the first travel day.  We caught the bus to the train station at 7:30 am, as instructed. At 8 am we answered the “All Aboard” call and took our seats in car JA02. The intention was to ride from Kamloops, BC to Vancouver, completing the circuit through the Canadian Rockies. As for tonight’s blog I was reminded of what Mickey Rooney said about his honeymoon night the eighth time he got married: I know what to do but I don’t know how to make it exciting.  Sure there would be some new pictures, but it was the same set of rails between the same two points as before. Fear not! One thing I’ve heard repeatedly in the 30+ years I’ve known Scott and Bev (granted I’d often uttered the words myself) was that any trip with them will be an adventure!  A hint of what was to come came shortly after we were seated. It seems that a fire had brok...
Read more