Birthday 12/1 – 12/3 2023

Our youngest son, Cody was about to turn 18 years old. Cody has not been too interested in going camping with us over the last few years. But when we asked what he wanted to do or where to go for his birthday, he said “I want to go to the place that had the hat shop and a bunch of other stores”. We soon realized he meant Leavenworth Washington. Since we had our dogs that would mean taking the camper and he said that would be okay. So I looked online right away and there was only one choice left. The KOA had a couple spots left but it was the high end, patio type of spots. At a ridiculous price of $120.00 per night! That is insane! If it was not for a special 18th birthday there would be no way in hell I would pay those prices. I made the reservations while shaking my head the whole time.

That Friday morning we left our home a bit north of Spokane Washington. A normal drive would be about 3 1/2 hours to get there. This trip though there would be some winter weather rolling through to deal with. The drive was good until we got west of town about 30 miles, then it turned worse. We would be going to Leavenworth via highway 2. I had to do a lot of concentrating on the drive. I was so surprised to not see the road plowed. There was only a handful of us on the roads at least. We made a stop in Coulee City to let the dogs go pee and mainly for me to unstress for a few minutes.

Once we made it to near Waterville, the roads were cleared by plows and the drive was fine. It stopped snowing for the most part and we arrived to the KOA in Leavenworth without issue. We soon got parked into our spot and did a quick setup.

After getting the dogs settled we made our walk into town. Only about a mile walk from our camp. Parking in town is not the best and we do not mind walking anyway.

In town it was not very busy at all. The pass for people coming from the Seattle side was not in very good condition and I am sure that kept a lot of people away. Bonus for us, no crowds. Another thing that has changed in town is that they no longer “flip the switch” for the Christmas lights in town. They keep the lights on all the time. That makes it so there is not the huge crowds on Front street waiting to see the lights come on. I think that was a great change in how things are done. For those that do not know, Leavenworth is a town all dressed up as a German town. It is a pretty neat tourist place to visit.

We needed to get some lunch and we always must stop at Munchen Haus to get a brat or three. I am not sue I can visit the town without making one stop there.

After lunch we walked around town a bit and went into a few stores, including the Kris Kringl store. Always a fun place for Christmas decorations. Although we did not buy anything there as the prices were pretty high for the things we were interested in. We eventually found an ornament elsewhere in town.

Eventually Cody wanted to go back to camp so he made his walk back. Joanne and I would then visit a couple places for some adult beverages. There are plenty to choose from in this town.

We walked around town looking at the lights before we made our walk back to camp. We ended our night around our little propane fire under our pop up tent. Snow was beginning to fall again.

We slept great, nice and toasty through the night. We woke up to some good amount of snow. The forecast said we would get some then it would get to the low 40s and rain. Well, it snowed alright…and kept snowing. We had well over a foot of new snow and it never did get to the 40’s or rain.

After clearing some snow we would eat some breakfast. Afterwards we made our walk back into town. This time the crowds were a bit bigger but still not bad at all. Cody said his back was hurting and walking around was not as much fun for him. We decided to go have his pizza lunch over at Blewett Brewing. A place for our beer and a place for great pizza too. After lunch Cody went back to camp. Bummer his back was hurting. We decided to stay in town and we found plenty to do. Got to see Santa arrive in town for a visit too.

We did do a walk down at Waterfront Park and we did do some geocaching too. The park was a snowy pretty place to explore.

We ended up at Goose Ridge tasting room in town for a few hours. Goose Ridge is in our top five wineries in Washington. They are down in the Tri Cities area. We knew the wine would be fantastic so a stop at the tasting room was not a hard twist of the arm for us. They even had some carolers stop in briefly.

We called it a night and finished our evening back at the propane fire and enjoyed a bottle of wine.

The next morning we had a bit more clearing of snow as it continued to snow a bit. We got our things packed up and made our way out of town. The drive was pretty snow covered. The overall drive back was not so great though. Not until we got back to the Wilbur area did the roads and conditions improve a bunch. In the end, it took us just as long to get home as it did to get to Leavenworth. 5 hour trip. Usually a 3 1/2 hour trip but slow and easy got the job done. No sense of pushing things to an unsafe speed.

It was a fun trip and really happy that Cody got to go to a place he wanted to go. Too bad his back hurt the Saturday but he said he still had fun on the trip. Very well could be the last time he spends a trip in the camper with us. Got to enjoy the times like that as you never know if it will be the last time or not.