Wonderful weekend in Wenatchee: Part 2

Continuing on from the last entry, here's what we got up to during the rest of our Easter weekend in Wenatchee, WA, with Doug and Barb...

First, here are some photos showing the mountains behind their apartment complex. The photo on the right shows "Castlerock" (see it?). The mountains down there are different to the ones we are used to seeing - mainly because they look more jagged and have less trees!



On Saturday morning Doug and Barb took us for a walk alongside the river, over a pedestrian bridge above a railyard, and into the downtown area, where we had a delicious breakfast at a restaurant on the 9th floor of a hotel. Here are some photos of the Wenatchee River, the artworks beside the walking path, and the four of us at breakfast...


That afternoon, Ben and I explored downtown Wenatchee a bit more. The red trolley in the first photo below is their local public transport! We stopped in at Caffe Mela, pictured below, and the next day at the gospel meeting we met the young couple who own it. :)


We also drove up into the hills a little way to admire the Wenatchee Valley and surrounding mountains.


On Saturday evening, Doug and Barb's son Chris, his wife Ana, and their little girl Mia were visiting, so it was nice to meet them too.

The next day, after we went to the meeting, Doug and Barb hosted an Easter lunch in the apartment complex's rec room. We were joined by two couples from their church, Pat and Wiley and Kathy and Greg. Lunch was delicious! It was followed by some excellent attempts by the others to follow our instructions and drink their coffee through a Tim Tam with its opposite corners bitten off (kind of an Aussie tradition, for those of you who don't know)! Here's a photo of us at lunch, and then two videos you might enjoy... Great sports huh?! :)


Pat's rather unsuccessful but extremely entertaining attempt (turn your speakers up!)...

Greg's successful attempt...

And on Monday, we drove home! On the way, we tried some free samples at the Applets and Cotlets factory in Cashmere (these are fruit-based gelatine sweets with an icing sugar coating, like Turkish delight), saw some amazing views of snow-covered mountains, stopped at a random roadside hand-carved knife shop where Ben bought a pocket knife, did a fast tour of a collection of factory outlet stores, and took only 9 minutes to cross the border into Canada. And that was our wonderful weekend - thanks Doug and Barb!

Wonderful weekend in Wenatchee: Part 1

For Easter, we drove to Wenatchee in Washington state, USA, to stay with a lovely couple, Doug and Barb, whom we met on our transatlantic cruise at the end of last year! (Click here for the earlier blog entry they featured in.)

Wenatchee is nearly 400kms from Burnaby, but the drive down on Thursday night took us 6.5 hours. This included slow-moving peak hour traffic getting out of the city, and 1 hour and 10 minutes to get across the Canada-USA border. Most of this wait was actually just getting to the front of the line-up of cars! But then we had to go inside and pay $6pp for our entry paperwork into the US. Anyway, can't complain - a workmate said it took her family 3.5 hours to get across the next morning!!

Getting to Wenatchee involved heading down the coast almost to Seattle, and then turning inland for the second half of the journey. As we neared Wenatchee, making excellent time and seeing few other cars on the highway, we could tell the scenery would have been spectacular if only we could see it! There were high snow banks beside the road, and large mountains looming through the darkness in all directions. At 10:30pm we arrived at Doug and Barb's welcoming home, an hour earlier than our GPS had predicted. It was wonderful to see them again!

The next day, Good Friday, they took us to the nearby town of Leavenworth. In a nutshell, this is Europe in America! In the 1960s, the citizens of Leavenworth began an incredibly successful undertaking to turn their dying railway town into a thriving Bavarian-themed village. With the snow- and pine-covered mountains rising dramatically all around, and the prevailing Germanic architectural style - adopted by every establishment from the touristy main street to the servo to the Safeway grocery store to the many hotels lining the highway - we really could have been in a little Austrian village in the Alps! Yes, of course it's a complete "tourist trap", but it is so well done that we couldn't help but admire their proactive and ingenius way of saving their town!

Here is a photo of a postcard showing past and present...


And here are some photos of Leavenworth's main street...


We split up to explore the town, met up with Doug and Barb for lunch, and then spent another couple of hours exploring. Some of the interesting shops we came across included: a cheesemonger where we bought crackers and Stilton and Blueberries cheese (the closest they had to our UK favourite, Wensleydale and Cranberries!)... a music box store with awesome Phantom of the Opera and Harry Potter musical snowglobes... a fudge store where we purchased 1.5 pounds of scrumptious fudge in six varieties... "An Australian Store" (yes, in America's little Bavaria... ah, globalisation!!) where we purchased Tim Tams and saw lots of other familiar brands (more later on the fate of the Tim Tams)... a fun hat shop... a store selling hot sauce so hot that there were numerous warning signs on the taster bottles and a sign saying "water: $1.50; after trying hot sauce: $20"... and lots more!



On the way back to Wenatchee, we stopped in at Smallwood's Harvest, which is a combination of petting zoo and country store. Lots of interesting regional products such as berry-flavoured honey and Amish-made pasta! Here's a photo of Ben with Doug and Barb, and one of us with some funny Easter Bunny scarecrows...


The drive to and from Leavenworth - along the road we had travelled over in the dark the night before - was beautiful. Wenatchee is called the "Apple Capital of the World", and the hills and valleys around the city have many fruit orchards. At this time of the year the fruit trees were bare and white, but it was still a pretty sight!


I'll be back soon to tell you about the rest of our weekend! Hope you all had a very special Easter!

Brilliant bargains and fantastic freebies

Saturday was a superb day for bargains and freebies; here is a list of what we found...

From a "free garage sale" we saw advertised on Craigslist: an 80GB hard drive, surge protector, two decks of unopened playing cards and a wallet to hold them, and all of the books below!!


From another Craigslist ad: a $5 electric grill, with some photo frames thrown in too...

From My Favourite Thrift Store on West 4th: old but perfectly usable versions of Trivial Pursuit and Balderdash, and a book, for a total of $6 (my favourite bargain of the day), plus computer speakers for $12...

From the Salvos Store: a black vase for a few dollars so we can have fresh flowers :)

And from yet another Craigslist ad: two white folding chairs for $5...

And so, at the end of the day, this is a photo of what we had acquired (except the table!), for a total of about $30 (or AUD $35):


Not bad hey!!! :D

We also had lunch at a nice Mexican restaurant on West 4th, and enjoyed seeing the cherry blossoms just starting to come out. In a week or two, Vancouver will look gloriously pink and fluffy!! They have an annual 3-week Cherry Blossom Festival here that started a couple of weeks ago, before any of the blossoms had made an appearance as they came out late this year!


Also, you may like to see what we discovered for sale in the innocent Candy Aisle store, which imports snacks and lollies from around the world, including Australia (we couldn't justify paying $10 for a bag of minties, but we did enjoy seeing the familiar brands!). REAL INSECTS!!! Want a scorpion in a lollipop? Like your crickets coated in chocolate? Or perhaps crunchy with sour cream and chives flavouring?? Aurgh!!!



We also purchased the red Killer Bunnies expansion pack and the card game Bohnanza, to make our future games nights a bit more varied. :D We got them from a great little games store Susie had told us about on West 4th, called Drexoll Games, where they have a big collection of games that customers are encouraged to try out in the playing booths instore. We sat and played Ingenious for a while. We'll be going back there!

And that was our lovely Saturday! :)

Lynn Canyon Park

Yesterday we had a wonderful day out exploring Vancouver. It was a clear, sunny day (a rare enough occasion that it's worth mentioning!), and our first destination was Lynn Canyon Park. This is a 617 acre park in North Vancouver with a suspension bridge, walking trails, and a beautiful river winding through it. I found out about it through the Tripadvisor website, as travellers had recommended it as a lesser known but totally free alternative to the expensive and busier Capilano Suspension Bridge attraction 15 minutes away!

Crossing the river to reach the walking trails at Lynn Canyon first involves making it across the swaying, bouncing suspension bridge 50 metres above the rushing rapids. The bridge is 48 metres long, and just wide enough for two people to pass each other. Suffice to say, I was hanging on tight!!


The view from the bridge, once one dared to glance down, was very beautiful:


And here I am, game enough to let go and try a little jump...


Ben's much better effort:


Once across the bridge, we turned left and headed down towards the river. On the way, we navigated treacherous root systems, saw lots of hairy green tree limbs, and leaned over the fence (which had the below warning sign) to see the churning emerald green water far below.


Down at the river, there were lots of protruding grey rocks, and the water was beautifully clear...


A little further upstream, a tiny waterfall flowed through a hole in the back of a cave-like rock formation, and moved gently through a deep pool before reaching the rocky river in the photos above. The most impressive thing about this pool was the amazing green colour of the water, caused by whatever fine mineral particles were floating in it. It was so gorgeous!!


From the pool, we walked up a few flights of stairs and then trekked back through the forest to the suspension bridge. On the way, I found a weird bright yellow fungus (see macro pic - each little bud of it is only about 0.5cm across). Between the blue sky, the green pool, the yellow fungus, and the pink cherry blossoms that are just coming out in Vancouver, it was definitely a day for appreciating the variety of amazingly vibrant colours found in nature!


And that was Lynn Canyon! If any of you come to visit us, we will definitely be taking you there! :) I'll be back soon to tell you about the fabulous bargains we found the rest of the day...

Killer Bunnies and Earth Hour

Last Saturday we had our third Killer Bunnies night! Here are the obligatory mid-game and winning carrot photos...


As it was Earth Hour during the party, we turned out the lights and sat in the dark for an hour, chatting and having a singalong by candlelight (and mobile phone light...). Very enjoyable!


And here is a group photo taken during Earth Hour... :D


Hope you are all happy and well - don't forget to drop us a line now and then! :)