We drove 164 miles from Burlington to Ellensburg on the eastern side of the Cascade mountains. By doing so, we left the cool breezes of the Pacific ocean and discovered the heat that the rest of the country has been suffering. What a shock! Aside from needing a jacket in some stores/restaurants, we won't be wearing them much. There are 5 Airstreams in camp -- feels like a rally!
Saturday was Farmer's Market day in Ellensburg, so we joined the crowd and bought cherries and apricots. We stopped at the County Museum and spent 2 hours learning about the area. From what we learned there, we ventured 15 miles to Thorp to tour the historic Thorp grist mill.
Sunday found us driving 65 miles to Leavenworth, advertised as a Bavarian village. The town is beautifully done - window boxes overflowing with flowers, and streets with German names. The town was actually a mining and lumbering town and the railroad came in and the town grew. Unfortunately in the 1950's the town started to die -- the kids left for college and didn't come back, the mining, lumbering, and railroad were no longer a part of the town, and the residents were looking for something to save the town. There was a vote -- turn it into a German settlement or a Swedish settlement. The German won out, and a man was hired to help remodel the buildings to look like a town in Germany. The people learned the German dances, and set themselves up as a tourist destination with alpine sports in the winter and several celebrations during the year. It worked! The day we were there, the town was packed! We drove around the town for 20 minutes before we found a parking spot. While we were there we toured their museum and learned about the town. It drive over was beautiful -- we passed through flat farmland and mountain passes. We shared the road with a bicycle ride that had about 200 cyclists chugging up the hills.
Monday was a stay-at-home day to wash clothes and relax. On August 7 we drove "up the road" to Wilbur, WA.
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