Last year Michael's cousin Michael...yeah it gets confusing for sure...contacted Michael to ask a bunch of questions about Leavenworth. Michael and his wife Robin had been wanting to come up from Oregon to Washington to do some exploring. We figured that we'd just make a staycation of it and join them on their exploring. At first they wanted to come in the middle of January, but then I suggested a week later since all our kids would be gone at Winter Camp so it'd be one less thing I'd have to worry about since we were going to be gone all day long on our adventures.
Unfortunately the camp the kids were going to had a water issue so camp was postponed until March. So...the kids ended up up being home the whole time we were out having fun. Thankfully our kids are awesome and can handle themselves just fine.
Michael and Robin got here on Thursday, January 23rd. They checked into a hotel a few minutes from our house and then came to hang out and have dinner with us. Ella and I headed out after dinner to go to Justine's last wrestling duel at his school, but Michael and Robin hung out with Michael at the house before turning in for the night.
The next morning Michael and Robin were at our house at 7:30am. We headed out shortly after that for our first day of fun. I basically let Michael plan this portion of the trip so he had all the details worked out. Our first stop was at a cute diner where we had a yummy breakfast. After that we drove down the road a bit and got out to go on a hike up to a watchtower.
It was cold out, but with us hiking we were just fine. The weather was absolutely gorgeous out....we could not have asked for better weather!
It was nice to be out in nature again enjoying the fresh air...even if I did complain a little bit!
The hike was 1 mile up and 1 mile down. Of course it felt longer than that!
It's always nice to do a hike where there is a reward at the end... a lake, a beautiful view...a watchtower. Seeing the watchtower definitely made it worth it and the even better part was you could go up in it!
I can't remember how many stairs up it was...but it was a lot. Robin is not the best with heights so she was a bit freaked out.
She hides it well though! Look at those beautiful mountains!
By this point I was sweaty from the hike and then being up in the watchtower it was windy so I was starting to get really cold!
Gorgeous!!!
That's a long way down!
Very cool! We're gonna have to bring the kids here because I know they'd love to go up there. We did see a few other group...which totally surprised me, but there wasn't anyone at the watchtower while we were there. So nice to have the whole thing to ourselves.
Just down the road a bit was a coffee stand that had a statue of Harry from the movie Harry and the Henderson's. I loved that movie growing up.
We got some drinks for the road...my peppermint hot cocoa was so good!
Our next stop was the Alpine Coaster in Leavenworth. I remember reading about it when it opened up and I've always wanted to go on an Alpine Coaster. The cost is $20 per person which isn't bad at all.
We filled out our online wavier forms, got in line, heard all the safety information and then were headed up on our own individual sleds. One of the main rules is you needed to stay 80 ft behind the sled in front of you. They had markers on the track so you knew roughly how far away you were from the person in front of you. The sleds are controlled by you. You could just push the handle bars forward all the way so gravity was taking you down or you could pull back to slow yourself down. They did have safety features so you wouldn't actual run into the person in front of you. I was the first one in line for our group. When I got to top I was so excited to just let gravity take over. Well....I only got to do that for maybe 5 seconds before I realized the lady in front of me with her kids was either scared herself or her kid was freaked out. I basically had to almost come to a complete stop in order to not hit her and that had a domino effect for the everyone else behind us. It was really frustrating! When we got to the bottom of the run we got out and were talking about it as a group. One of the workers overheard us and asked if we had been stuck behind a slow rider and we said yes. She said that they would gladly let us right again. I really wish we had taken her up on her offer, but we had a bunch of other things we wanted to do and the line was really long so we didn't want to wait again. I would totally go again, but I honestly think they need to make an adjustment to the whole set up. People should be able to have 2 speeds...turtle or hare. You'd be traveling down at the speed your choosing and they could space the hare people farther away from the turtle people so the hare people could still have a great ride.
After the Alpine Coaster we drove over to Cashmere to go to Apple Annie's Antique Mall. Robin was blown away by how huge it was. We didn't go through everything, but we did most of it. None of us saw anything that we couldn't live without, but it was still fun to browse. We hadn't eaten since breakfast at the diner so we were all getting hungry. It was after 3pm so we just decided to go have an early dinner and miss the dinner rush so we drove back to Leavenworth to find some yummy German food.
The sun had already gone behind the hillside and it was definitely colder.
We ended up eating at Rhein Haus. They had outdoor seating available and they did have those tables with those fire centerpieces, but I absolutely hate being cold so we sat inside the restaurant.
Michael ordered himself a beer thinking it would be a good size, but it came out a mammoth size!!!
Instead of ordering individual dinners we decided to order family style and share everything. I did order a stew that came in a bread bowl and no one wanted any of that so I got it all to myself. It was so yummy! We also got this big platter of sausages with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut and one order of the Pork Schnitzel. Everything was so yummy except the vegan sausage...that was nasty. Also Michael prefers my Pork Schnitzel since I serve it with a honey mustard mayo...he's not a huge fan of gravy.
One of the things this restaurant is known for is their giant pretzels and oh my goodness they aren't exaggerating one bit. It came with normal beer cheese, spicy cream cheese and chocolate dipping sauces. My favorite was the spicy cream cheese, but Michael's favorite was surprisingly the chocolate. We were so hungry so we put a good dent in all that food.
After dinner we wandered through a bunch of stores and got to admire the Christmas Lights. That was one of the main reasons Michael and Robin wanted to come. Leavenworth is so pretty normally, but then add Christmas Lights and it's even more pretty. Thankfully they keep the Christmas Lights up until the end of January.
One of our last stops was a candy store where I got the kids some Saltwater Taffy and myself a Giant Smarties. I love those!!! After that we made a pit stop at the restrooms and then got on the road. We didn't get home until 8:30ish....it was a full day of fun!
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