Leavenworth, by accident – Spring Break part 3

Part of our Spring Break exploration in the PNW was into the Cascades east of Seattle. We were based out of North Bend, which meant the town and national forest surround Cle Elum was within an easy 45 minute drive, and something we also wanted to see beyond the sort of ‘easy’ boundary of Snoqualmie Pass. We had traveled over the pass just to visit the ranger station earlier in the week, and get suggestions for safe and scenic places to hike.

We only ended up doing one of the three we had recommended to us, and boy was that one an epic.

Now honestly, I just sold that as being worse than it was. But here’s how it happened. It was supposed to be a snowshoe hike. But daddy didn’t want to wear his snowshoes because the beginning of the trail looked well packed from snowmobiles and other foot traffic (obviously snowshoes). Momma strongly disagreed with him about this but what could she do? She couldn’t bring her snowshoes because then when daddy started posthole-ing and she didn’t he would still want to turn around regardless of whether the same thing was happening to her.

So off we went, with no snowshoes! We had many miles ahead of us, and the day was (again) very warm and sunny. The trail was packed hard enough for the first mile, but quickly degraded as the temperatures rose and the distance people had traveled and packed the snow down dropped off.

The views were pretty, but momma took hardly any pictures because we never made it to even the second part of the trail where the views would really start. That’s because the packed ground fell away and momma and daddy started posthole-ing all the way up to their hips and waists! It was actually VERY comical for Lolo and I, as you can see we were so amused (and also bored with how slow we were traveling) we just laid down to watch them pull themselves out of the snow holes they were creating.

After they finally made the decision to abandon this hike and made it back to the car, momma and daddy both agreed we should give up on hiking for the day (and already, it had been more than 4 hours of work for 6.5 measly miles!) and just drive to Leavenworth because it was not that far from where we were and they had heard it was really pretty there.

And are we sure glad that is just what they did! Look at this!

Leavenworth was just full of mountains still covered in snow, on all sides. I’m not sure how the snow was still sticking as much as it was, but it was simply beautiful! As we drove through town momma suggested stopping at the ranger station for a hiking recommendation. The maintenance worker inside had a great suggestion for us to drive up to the end of Icicle road and then go further up on foot for views that would surely impress.

We are so glad he gave us this idea, it was a lovely afternoon adventure that left us wanting to do a LOT more in the area sometime in the future!

Of course, daddy took credit for the happenstance trip because he was the one who insisted on not wearing snowshoes on the snowshoe hike we’d done in Cle Elum earlier.

Momma says the beauty of Leavenworth did not exonerate him from that poor decision making!

But look who wore his snowshoes in Leavenworth! Thank goodness, because this beauty would have been a shame to not see while we were in Washington.

We are so happy that we got to spend even a few hours here in Leavenworth, it was amazing, not busy, and only had friendly people and pups.

The sun “went down” a lot earlier here because the peaks are so tall, but we still had 2+ hours of driving to get back to our cabin in North Bend that had sunlight almost the whole way 😂.

Until next time Leavenworth 😘 and we will be back for you, Cle Elum, better prepared next time!