Where Has All The Wildlife Gone?

Thursday 20 August 2015

With no train or road noise to disturb us, we both slept well, but were awake not long after seven. We didn't rush to breakfast as we'd planned to spend the day in the local area.

We had decided to continue along the Cascades Loop and go back west on the Route 2 as far as Stevens Pass. At first the road, four lanes wide, passed through fruit growing farms but eventually started climbing into the mountains. High on the ridges either side of the road were huge houses perched on the edges of the steep hills, I guess if you could afford it, these houses caught the best of the breeze and have great views.

After about 20 miles, we came to the town of Leavenworth. For reasons that I can only guess, this town plunges you straight into Bavaria. I imagine the original settlers were from that part of Germany. The whole town is built in alpine/Bavarian style. It looks good in a kitsch sort of way, but is extremely touristy. The flower displays on the balconies and outside houses were beautiful. We wandered around the town briefly, but weren't inclined to stop.

We continued on west on Route 2 primarily looking for places to spot wildlife in general and, more specifically, birds. We stopped a couple of times in likely looking places, but saw nothing. We continued up to Stevens Pass at just over 4000ft hoping for some more spectacular views. It got quite overcast as we headed up and the temperature dropped to 56F and the summit of the pass was nothing special at all.

We turned around and headed straight down, turning off toward Lake Wenatchee State Park. We pulled in, but were put off by the $10 day use ticket as we only wanted to park for a short while to look at birds.

We continued back to Leavenworth on a minor road but could find nowhere to pull over for lunch or bird-spotting. We passed through Leavenworth again and turned off into Cashmere another small town. Here we found a shady pot to park and eat our lunch of fresh fruit. We actually saw three Red-winged Blackbirds here!

After lunch, we found a small coffee house, Weeds, in Cashmere and had a drink, it was particularly good coffee. We also had a planning meeting to decide how to spend the remainder of the day and to decide where to head tomorrow. That all done, we drove back into Wenatchee.

We tried to drive to the town market by the direct route, but found a train parked across the road! We eventually found an underpass and parked at the market. The very large shed contains a number or artisan businesses. We had a wander around them, stopping to do a quality control check on the home-made ice cream stall. We also did a brief wine tasting with Jones of Washington. We tried their Viognier and Riesling. Both were very good, I especially liked the Riesling, the flavour just exploded in the mouth. We bought a bottle of each. I particularly liked the packaging!

The remainder of the day was spent catching up with email and hunting down like accommodation for tomorrow night.

This evening, we ate, rather booringly, at Applebee's. The food is usually good at least. We got a deal on two salads and a half rack of ribs. Very good it was too.

Posted with Blogsy