Living in Leavenworth-Momentarily

We're H-E--E-R-E!  You know how some trips are uneventful, and others just seem to go wrong at the start? Well, we had a TINY snafu today...(Easy for YOU to say, I'm the driver who has to deal with snafus! complains E.) Well, that's definitely true. We had the normal idiots that float over the line and aren't paying attention to their driving, nearly giving Eldy a heart attack because there's no room for him to go anywhere....and then we had a TINY navigational slip up by the co-pilot. (Fess up, dear! That would be Sparky!) In the old days, Eldy would have lost his temper and done some yelling...

This is according to his kids, but he maintained his cool today when we missed the sharp turn early on to state highway 16 as we were coming around Puget Sound in the Seattle/Tacoma area. Eldy had researched the ferry vs. going south around Puget Sound and back up north again, to get on highway 2 east towards Leavenworth. NOT taking the ferry only added about 71 miles to our trip and the ferry would have been much more expensive...(but more fun! says Sparky.)  At any rate, we missed our turn for the highway jog, 3 south to 16 south right at Bremerton, due to the co-pilot, MOI, not being clear on map and highway number directions (Now, why doesn't THAT surprise me????) and then we had to find a place to turn around. We picked an industrial park a few miles down the road, pulled into the parking lot and realized we weren't going to be able to swing through the parking lot of this particular part of the industrial park with the tow behind. So-o-o-o-o, Sparky monitored Eldy's heart rate and temper scale, and he remained remarkably calm while we unhooked the car, brought the motorhome around into position for getting back out on the highway, hooked back up and away we went. The trip was BEAUTIFUL! We passed through Stevens Pass, about 4,000 feet high, and the diesel pusher struggled a bit...The Cascades were spectacular! The rest of the trip here was uneventful EXCEPT for....

The COWGIRLS expresso coffee shop....in case you haven't read lately, the owners of this little coffee shop chain have decided to "spice" things up a bit...they have scantily clad waitresses in these little coffee shops beside the road wearing nothing more than teeny bikinis. I guess in some places, they (not necessarily the Cowgirls chain) are NAKED!~ IN THEIR BIRTHDAY SUITS! Wooo-eeeee! Eldy has been researching his little heart out to figure out if any of these coffee shops are in line with our navigational plans and so far they aren't. Darn, what a shame....at any rate, he usually is not the spotter of unique things on the road because his eyes are 99% on his gauges and the road in front of him, 99% of the time. But TODAY, he spotted the Cowgirls expresso coffee shop on our way through the small town of Monroe, WA. It must have been the scantily clad, buxom female illustration on the side of the building that caught his eye...(Why, no, sweetie...it was the black and white cow spots that decorate the whole little building.) HA! He frantically (well, actually, he was calmer than that) looked for an exit plan to get off the two lane highway to get back to the coffee shop to check it out, but no such luck with pulling the motorhome with car behind...maybe another town, another day sweetie.....

BTW, expresso coffee shops are HUGE out here in Oregon and Washington, and some of them are just as cute as a button! We saw some really neat ones on our travels out here but haven't managed to get photos of them. Ninety-nine percent of them are just tiny little buildings that sit in parking lots or at the side of the road, outside drive up service only. Some offer a little bit of food along with the coffee and others just the strong stuff.

Here we are at the Thousand Trails Park in Leavenworth, Washington for the coming week. Actually, it's not in Leavenworth at all, but about 20 miles west of there. We'll show you all around the park and the town of Leavenworth tomorrow...it's very pretty in the park, like camping in a state forest. We've even got the SKEETERS thick as thieves in the park, just like you do in a heavily wooded state park area.  See you later....(OW! Three bites in less than two minutes...arrrrggghhh! Get out the bug spray, Sparky!) I'm on it, Eldo! Anybody got suggestions for really great bug repellants besides spraying yourself sick with chemicals? Citronella candles we have, but they don't seem to work. See you later!