America's farm land

We were on the Idaho - Washington border for a few nights at Old American RV Resort in Newport, WA.  Our RV was actually in Idaho, but the office for the resort was in Washington.  This park is directly on the Pend Oreille River and as we tooled around town we kept passing this only indication that you have entered Washington from Idaho.  

Newport is small town and they have a section they call Old Town that is actually in Idaho and runs along the river.  We found a great restaurant, Riverbank Family Restaurant (established in 1963 and still owned by the same family).  They also have an attached bar, Fay’s Lounge, but we never got a chance to check that out.  We had poor cell service and no WiFi, but we did find another pretty cool bar downtown that had good WiFi.  It was called Kelly’s. They served local brews, but were not our usual brewery. 

Heading deeper into Washington we headed for Othello.  We stayed at O'Sullivan's Sportsman Resort for a few days. This is a members only KM Resort campground that we have access to through our  RPI affiliation with Thousand Trail. This is a great place. The sites are so roomy with nice grass between the sites. Met some real nice people here. It is a real community. They have awesome facilities and are adjacent to a golf course that has a great restaurant and bar. We never left the area of the park until we were pulling out to move on.

When we did leave Othella to head towards Leavenworth we drove through beautiful farmland. Crops of everything all around us for miles. It was beautiful. We discovered, via a billboard, that this county of Washington grows more potatoes than Idaho. I know! It blew my mind too. 

We stayed at the Thousand Trails in Leavenworth and it is a pretty cool place.  Lots of woods, which really translates to small RV slips and the roads are so dusty you can’t keep your windows open or really enjoy the outside at your site (unless you like road dust in your drink). Several people were watering the road in front of their sites. I don’t think it helped.  But we found a good spot and headed for the trails all around the park.  The woods are amazing here.  They are green with large trees and I am in love with these Ponderosa Pines.  They look like they are dripping.

This Thousand Trails has these brightly colored tiny houses for rent.

I was very excited about coming to Leavenworth.  I had read about it being a very Austrian / Swiss Alps kinda feel and I loved it there.  Sure enough, it was really cool. Everywhere the buildings are built to bring you to the Alps.  The city is surrounded by mountains as well.  Very pretty place.  

We hit the little shops like the rest of the tourists - and there were a few tourists!  We did our shopping and hit the brewery.  A cool vibe here too.  

These drawings are chalk!  I know!!!!!!

We got a seat on the patio and started people watching when out of 

nowhere this little boy yells, ‘Hi, Santa!’

Wow, who do YOU think he was talking to????

I laughed so hard I thought I almost peed my pants!

We decided since we drove all the way to the Swiss Alps we should have some Bavarian food.  I tell you what, we really do stumble into some of the best places!  This time it was the Barren Haus.  Instead of getting my usual Schnitzel, this place had a Schnitzel Cordon Bleu.  I mean, it don’t get any better than that.  Does it, really???  No, it does not.  It was really good.  Dennis got the Sauer Braten and it was the most tender and delicious roast I have ever had.  I highly recommend this place.  They had an hour wait and I asked if the bar / stage area was open seating and the lady let us sit there, but the person behind me asked and they said no. I think it was a seating limit or staff limit issue, not all of their tables were full.  We have run into the staff problems every where we go. Additionally, I don’t think Washington is wide open yet.  They still have to limit guests indoors.  Some of the restaurants here in Leavenworth were only open on weekends because they can’t get any help, according to one of the locals.  When will we ever get back to normal, guys?  I hope soon.

Leavenworth has these beautiful hanging flowers all over the place.  They even have them set up to self water.  We are definitely out of the desert because they are not afraid to use water in Washington.

We hit a wine tasting room in Leavenworth too that was really good.  Their wines sell for $60 a bottle which is a little steep for us, but they discount the cost of the tasting if you buy some.  So we did!!!!

Love me some Sangiovese - This one is great

We did sit outside and enjoy the nice weather one evening at the RV park and saw these cute little chipmunks running around hiding nuts and met some other really nice local folks.  

We found several wineries in the area and at least three on our way home from the grocery store one day, so we had to finally stop, right?  We had a real nice tasting with a snack of cheese and crackers.

We had a really nice time in Leavenworth.  I would totally go back there and stay in town.  That way we could walk to all the tasting rooms.  It reminded me of Fredericksburg in some ways. 

Next up on our adventure was Puget Sound.  I am familiar with the name Puget Sound but nothing specific about it.  I discovered it was called a ‘Sound’ by British explorers who were here, well, exploring.  A ‘Sound’ refers to body of water that is not completely open to the sea and has islands.  Well, I think it fits perfectly!  We are actually staying in Poulsbo.  To get here you have to cross the Narrows Bridge or take a ferry at $100+.  We decided to take the bridge and people - even Dennis - remembered hearing about this bridge going all wonky and collapsing during a high wind. It had been opened in July, 1940 and collapsed in November of the same year. I do not recall hearing about this and am glad I didn’t - but I have now seen the video and it is just crazy!

So I told you Washington has water everywhere.  Well, it looks like the Sound is actually very low as we ran around Poulsbo and the surrounding area.  They have a beautiful historic downtown on the waterfront.  It is really breathtaking.  But the water is about 100 yards from shore.  It was dry and people were walking around on it and playing in the water, but some boats were even moored mostly out of the water.  So I know that cannot be the its normal level.

This is a beautiful area - I think all of Washington is fantastic! Simply beautiful.  But, you have to be a special kind of stupid to be the engineer that designed the highway system here.  Traffic is unbelievable.  When you have three merging 2-3 lane highways that merge down to three lanes, or four if you count the exit only lane they throw in there as well it is a massive pile up!  This is one example.  All of that was happening simultaneously.  The exit only lane was not a half a mile from the massive merge.  We had been forewarned and didn’t try to drive too much with the RV through that mess, but even without it behind us it was rough.

Besides the frustrating traffic around Seattle and Tacoma, we had a darned flat tire.  We were filling up the truck to prepare to head towards Monroe when we got out this very loud hissing sound was all we could hear.  I couldn’t figure it out at first.  So it’s over 100 degrees outside and we have to change this enormous tire.  The valve stem just busted.  I think Dennis took three breaks and drank three bottles of water.  I held an umbrella over him, but it was still so hot on this asphalt parking lot.  Then we went down a Firestone and had them repair it, but that took 2 hours.  They were so busy.  So after all that we just had to treat ourselves to some fresh seafood at a restaurant by the water.  I think he deserved it, don’t you?

We plan to stay around the sound, hoping this heatwave will pass.  Temps have been in the 100’s where they are normally in the 70’s.  They are shutting down schools and businesses - that sucks for us.  But most homes and some businesses don’t have A/C here.  It sounds crazy to us Texans, but they so seldom need it they just don’t make that investment.  They don’t even have A/C in their cars. So we are finding restaurants closed (they say the kitchen can get up to 120 degrees under normal conditions, with this heat they are afraid for their kitchen staff).

So we go to Monroe, WA and had planned to drive north to Bellingham (which is an hour and a half drive) and then down to La Conner and then take the scenic drive on WA Hwy 11.  I really wanted to see these historic waterfronts that are supposed to be thriving with hip businesses and artsy fartsy stuff.  We got to Bellingham and the entire downtown area is closed.  There is no one walking the streets, except this one man looking in windows to see if anyone is in there.  He must be like us, here visiting and there is nothing to do.  So we tried to find a restaurant to grab lunch, and, well, see above. HEAT WAVE. I thought we were gonna have to resort to eating our beef jerky (we keep some in the console) for lunch.  We did find an outdoor brewery that was open.  They said if they had a kitchen they would likely have been closed as well. This brewery, like so many others, gets its food service from food trucks. Of course, they were no where to be found.  UNFORTUNATELY, I opted for a nice wine, a red blend, they had.  Not refreshing in 110 degrees.  I almost could not finish it.  We then walked through Boardwalk Park and there are people everywhere.  They have a coffee shop in the park and it is pumping out the cold beverages at lightning speed. Everyone is just laying around in the shade with their dogs and kids trying to get out of the heat.  All the windows and doors of the nearby apartments are open.  We saw one guy had a fan in the window, but it was on the sunny side of the house.  It isn’t that bad in the shade, he should have put the fan in a different window.

 

I know we will survive this heat wave, it feels pretty normal to us.  It is supposed to pass soon and maybe we will be able to check more stuff out.

It should be cooler when we leave this location.  We will be meeting up with some folks we met at the Old American RV Resort in Cle Elum, which apparently is near where all the famous folks have their summer homes.  I will let you know how it goes.