Day Trip

It seems a bit quiet around the house this morning.  Amy’s cousin Pippa is gone-back in Puyallup to spend the remainder of her visit to the state of Washington with my parents.

While she was here we decided to take her to Leavenworth, a Bavarian styled town framed against Sleeping Lady mountain in the Cascade mountain range.

It takes a little over an hour to get to Leavenworth from our house, but the scenery is really beautiful.  The drive winds through the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, stunning with its tall evergreens and blue sky.

There are many fruit stands near Leavenworth, as the area is conducive to growing peaches, pears, cherries and other summer fruit.  We bought some cherries to snack on and admired the flowers which were literally bursting with blooms!  Our home town of Ellensburg has a desert climate and it takes a bit of coaxing for flowers to thrive.  But in the mountain air, flowers seem to grow like crazy, and I love it!

 

We stopped for lunch at the Leavenworth Salmon Hatchery. I took the picture above from the vantage point of our picnic table.  What a view!!

And here is Sleeping Lady.  I wonder what it’s like for her, face towards the sky day after day.  She surely can’t sleep all of the time-and the night time stars must be magnificent!

 A  colorful and impressive mosaic depicting salmon…and the real thing below.

 

These are Chinook Salmon.  They are hatched, and then raised at the hatchery for 18 months before being released into the wild where they swim 500 miles downstream to the Pacific ocean.  1-3 years later they swim back to the hatchery to spawn-the same 500 miles, though upstream this time. 

By the end of the arduous journey, which also marks the end of their life cycle, some of these beautiful creatures are looking a little worse for wear.  This salmon has lost all of the skin on its head.

Salmon truly are magnificent animals, and such a big part of the rich heritage of the Pacific Northwest.

At the hatchery, there were flowers everywhere too. I especially liked these purple centered daisy like blossoms.

After lunch, we ventured into the actual town of Leavenworth.  There is a lot to see there, but unfortunately, you have thousands of other people who want to see it all with you.  Leavenworth is one perpetual festival after another and the crowds are always present.  Still, it’s a fun town to visit, there is good food, and the setting-that grand sleeping lady-can’t be beat.

More gorgeous flowers!

 

And the biggest beetle we’d ever seen-and with it’s own cell phone no less!

 

All in all, it was a fun day and it was great to spend time with a member of our family we don’t get to see very often.

Hope all of you have a great weekend, and here’s wishing you some pleasant day trips of your own!