Christmas in God's Country & Seeing Snow in May!

For Christmas this year, all of our offspring gave us a "gift weekend" to Leavenworth, WA. Located about 160 miles west of B'Ham, over Steven's Pass on the eastern slopes of the Cascade mountain range, Leavenworth is best described as the "Bavaria of the West". During the early 60's it was a dying city, but with some foresight, reinvented itself into the tourist area it is today. Although it certainly has all the trappings of the typical tourist town, it still is a delightful place. The mountain scenery is so gorgeous, that it was hard not to feel comfortable & relaxed.

With lots of rain (even for the NW) and record breaking cold temps, it has been a terrible spring this year. So it was with much trepidation that I made our reservations for our stay in Leavenworth. And, even though I came down with cold symptoms two days before we were to leave, we decided not to change our plans. We headed out "in the rain" on Saturday morning and made our way east. As we went over Stevens Pass, it was amazing to see how much snow was piled up. The ski area at the Pass averages over 450 inches/year & I'm sure this was a banner year. As we began to get closer to our destination, blue, sunny skies beckoned and remained until we left Monday morning. With the extraordinary weather, we were able to hike, shop, eat outdoors, relax and relish the warmth of the sun on our faces all weekend.

Everyone in the city was friendly and welcoming. We stayed at a great place, the Hotel Pension Anna, rightfully ranked #1 on Trip Advisor. The innkeepers and their staff were quite helpful and we met a nice couple from the Tri-Cities area who invited us to call them "if you are ever in our area"! We ate entirely too much food, but that's part of the fun traveling to new places. Bob, of course, had to have a "Bob's Big Brat" for lunch and my Wiener Schnitzel with red cabbage for dinner was yum! Of course there was ice cream for dessert, but then again, there is always ice cream on vacation whenever Bob is around!

We did quite a bit of walking and one moderate to difficult hike. The hike had amazing views of the valley below...one of the prettiest views of any valley I've ever seen. We definitely see more trips to this fun city in our future. Christmas sounds like a wonderful time to visit and the summer would offer lots more hiking trails to climb. This part of WA has more sun than the West, so it often is a day trip for Seattlelites looking to escape the winter gloom. It sure ended up being a great escape for us and many thanks to our Pete, Steve, Anne, Angie, Hannah, Lizzie, & Evan for the perfect Christmas gift!