Washington - Day 16 - Chelan, Leavenworth, to Lake Easton

Lake Easton State Park, Easton

Thursday, 16 June 2022

today's route

Dext and I saw deer in the campground this morning and continued to see marmots, which fascinate Dexter because of them looking a lot like overgrown chipmunks (I think).  And lots of nuthatches and some woodpeckers (based on their sounds - I didn't see any of them).

We went back through Winthrop and got back on the road.  I passed a sign telling me to turn left for the Smokejumper Base, which I looked up and learned is one of 7 such centers for the US Forest Service program to fight forest fires.  It was opened here in 1945, so it's certainly got a history.  If you're interested, I found a website that explains the program.   https://www.historylink.org/Smokejumpers

We passed through Twisp, "The Heart of the Methow Valley," and the road began to follow the Methow River.

I saw alfalfa for sale and passed large orchards (probably apple) on both sides of the road.

At the town of Methow, I saw lots of whitewater in the river there.

Early in the drive, I saw high hills covered with green trees except where they were too steep, with rocky protrusions.  But gradually the view changed to more desert-like vegetation and lower hills, still following the Methow River.

At Pateros, we turned onto US-97 and began to follow the Columbia River again.  Even this far on its journey, it's still an enormous river.

I saw lots of vineyards and, on the edge of one of them, I saw dozens of very small buildings, all the same, and wondered if they were housing for migrant workers.

I turned off the main part of US-97 to get to Chelan and quickly found we were climbing steep rocky hills high above the Columbia River.  I had trouble getting elevation information on this but the town sits at 1,129', which I think is about 300' above the main road.  Lake Chelan was originally the largest natural lake in the state.  It has since been dammed and is now just a lake - though a beautiful one and a destination for many.

Chelan is pronounced sheh-LAN and is a mix of old and modern.  It's obviously an apple-growing region, based on the word "apple" appearing in about half the town's signs.  I got lost trying to follow Google's directions to a park that didn't seem to exist (neither did the roads), and ended up stumbling on a different park in a residential neighborhood.  I passed one house with a mailbox as usual on a pole in front of the house, and a 2nd mailbox on a tall tall pole next to it.  That 2nd mailbox was labeled "Air Mail."

I passed a sign for Chelan Falls (both a town and a waterfall), though the falls aren't visible from the road.  Meanwhile I crossed the Columbia on a bridge so old the struts were rusty, which did not give me a comfortable feeling.  

It was obvious, by the way, that the river was very full, showing how much rain that rain shadow last week had dumped in this usually fairly dry area.  Actually, I heard on the radio that the Palouse River, in southeastern WA and in Idaho, is flooding and that some farmers are thinking they'll have to replant their crops if they want a harvest this year.

I got another thank you for pulling over.  (I doubt these thank yous are interesting to anyone but me, but I want to remind myself later about the nice motorists when I find them.)  

In contrast, I saw in oncoming traffic a woman in an SUV with a child in the car; she was passing a tanker truck and stayed so long in my lane I had to stop to be sure she could make it back in her lane before hitting me - and I noticed the tanker slowed down too.  Very nearly a tragedy that the kid didn't ask for.  

And in further contrast, I noticed at one point that I had 5 vehicles behind me and I pulled over mostly off the road next to a guard rail in a legal passing zone and the first one in line blared at me as he passed.  So that's Washington as well as Oregon.  Is it the Pacific Northwest that has such rude drivers or are drivers much more on edge than they used to be?

I passed an orchard that said it had peaches.  Elsewhere I saw acres of some plant being shaped onto Y-frames.

see close-up below

enlargement of the photo above

The Y shape isn't very clear in these photos, but I couldn't find a place to stop when I passed other fields that showed it.  Still, maybe you can see that these plants - that look like maybe apple trees? - aren't growing as nature originally intended.  I thought at first they were grapevines, but nearby I saw regular grapevines growing as usual.

In other places I saw plants trained like these that were covered in heavy netting.  Washington is known for its cherries as well as its apples, and I wondered if some of the red fruit I was seeing might be cherries.

I took a small detour so I could see a bit of Wenatchee (and found a traffic circle that Google didn't mention).  I stopped at Riverside Park that I'd found on the map when I was planning the route, and it was nicer than I'd thought.  The river in question was the Columbia River, which had been tamed a bit through this urban area but was still itself.  The park was a long greenbelt area with a walking path along the river and picnic tables and lots of large old trees, so there was plenty of shade.  We stopped there, I took Dexter out for a walk (he really appreciated all the grass), and we had some lunch.

From Wenatchee I headed up into the mountains toward Leavenworth.  This town has thrown all its chips into being a Bavarian Village and plays it up to the hilt.

a tiny piece of downtown (see detail below)

the area above the doors enlarged

The town is filled with pedestrian-only areas, and the only parking I could find was the all-day-for-$9 type.  The streets were very narrow, which I had trouble navigating, and I felt pretty out of place here.  I was glad I'd walked Dext when I did because we sure couldn't stop anywhere here.

But it's very attractive town, in a tourist-y sort of way.  The sign entering the town said "Wilkommen" and the same sign said "Auf Wiedersehen" for those leaving.

Just after I passed that sign I noticed in an orchard next to the road there was a helicopter hovering just feet above the field and wondered what was going on.

The radio provided me with a choice between country/western, God, classical music, and right-wing talk.  That talk show, for instance, came on right after I'd been listening to the testimony at the January 6th committee hearings and what they wanted to focus on was conspiracies about the Covid medications.  However, I did happen across a song that told me, "You can't buy happiness but you can buy dirt."  Suggesting people invest in land?

I saw a herd of cows in a field where the grass was so high it was past their tummies.  And dozens of horses here and there.

I passed through Cle Elum (pronounced clee-ELL-um), where a sign told me their elevation is 1,920' and their population is almost identical.

I crossed the Yakima River and finally came to tonight's campground.  I for one was pretty tired after almost 200 miles of this kind of driving.