Staycation With The Darby's - Day 2

Our final day of our Staycation with the Darby's we got a little bit of a later start. I think we left at 8am. We wanted to go into Seattle, but just driving there isn't that fun. Especially on a nice sunny day, the way to go into the city is to take a ferry. We took a nice drive over to Bremerton and we were the first people in line for the 11am ferry. Since we were so early we got out to walk down the boardwalk and look around. I didn't take into consideration that it would be so early not much would be open, but it was just nice to walk. We did find a coffee shop we were got drinks and a muffin while we waited for the ferry to arrive. 

First in line gets your front row parking on the ferry too! 

We could not get over the weather. It was so gorgeous! 

I haven't been on a ferry since my Aunt, my cousin and her kids came out in 2018 and we were blessed with gorgeous weather that day too. 

We didn't just sit down inside and enjoy the ride....we hung out outside or just inside the window area up top so we could take in the view. 

At one point I could look north and see Mount Baker, southeast and see Mount Rainier, east and see the Cascade Mountains and west and see the Olympic Mountains. 

The Emerald City! 

It really does look so pretty coming in from the water. 

I spot The Great Wheel! 

It was fun being tour guides for Michael and Robin. After coming off the ferry they make you turn to the right so we had to do this whole turning around thing so we could go back towards downtown. After finding parking we headed to the pier for lunch. 

Michael and I haven't got to The Crab Pot in years...maybe even before kids, but if you are going to give someone the full tourist experiences you have to go. 

I had no idea Michael was wielding his hammer so aggressively towards me! :) 

  

We did the same thing as the day before where we decided to order family style. We ordered one of the crab pot feasts for two and then we got oysters on the half shell and oyster shooters. I had never had oysters before, but I'm all up for trying new things. I LOVED them! The oyster shooters were especially yummy because they were in vinegar with shallots and hot sauce and we added lemon juice. I always wondered how you enjoyed them if you just swallowed them, but the flavor really does stick around....so yummy! The oysters on the half shell we ate with cocktail sauce and lemon juice. I actually chewed those just a bit and they were okay...the shooters were my favorite though. After consuming the feast Robin did not have her fill of crab so we ordered another pound of crab and more oyster shooters. 

Next stop was The Great Wheel. 

The cost wasn't too bad for going up it's was $23 per person....I say it wasn't bad because we were only paying for 2 of us. If we were to take all the kids it would be SO expensive! 

After we paid for the tickets we got some drinks. I got the last hot chocolate of the day. They came in these nice reusable cups with lids. 

Like I said before Robin does not do well with heights. She was fine before we got on because they had music playing, but the music wasn't piped into the cars. Robin is the one that got me hooked on Taylor Swift so I decided we needed to jam out to some Tay-Tay and that would get her mind off her fear. Sure enough...it worked! We were able to sing and she was actually looking all around and enjoying herself!

 I was really impressed with the loading speed. That's one of the things I really hate about Ferris Wheels....it takes forever to load. They had it set up so 6 car were getting loaded at once. The whole ride was about 15 minutes which was honestly really nice! 

Love that I got the shadow of the wheel! 

Look at that big beautiful mountain! 

After finishing up there we headed back to the van only to find a parking ticket on our windshield. We did have a bit of an issue with the app they told us to pay with so we just found a kiosk to pay from that was inside the parking garage we were parked in. I don't know what happened, but we got a ticket. We had the receipt to prove we paid so Michael was going to call them on Monday to figure it out. Unfortunately some how we lost the ticket and the receipt. I have no idea where they are so now we are going to be one of those people where the next time we get pulled over by a cop they are going to say...."Do you know you have unpaid parking tickets?" Who knows if that's actually a thing they do...I don't know! 

Next stop was the quintessential tourist stop in Seattle....The Space Needle! 

A lot has changed since the last time I've been here so I didn't realize it would be better to prepurchase tickets to go up. When we got there it was 4ish and our tickets to get in line to go up weren't until 5:15pm. That was just to get in the line to go up. The line itself was about an hour long. 

We didn't really want to walk around the Seattle Center since it was so cold so we just hung around in the gift shop and looked at everything. We did get in the line about 10 minutes earlier than our time and they were okay with that. The line wasn't too bad since they had all these facts and history in regards to the building of The Space Needle. It definitely made the wait bearable.  

I found Santa on the Space Needle. 

At first I was really bummed that we weren't going to go up while it was daylight, but I decided to change my perspective and just enjoy the fact that we were going to get to see the city from a different light. It was awesome! I don't think I've ever been up there at night and it was so pretty! 

Michael and Robin were loving it! Robin was still freaked out by the heights, but she did really great! 

Sitting on the glass bench that leans you back onto the glass wall. 

Standing on the glass floor looking straight down was kind of trippy! 

We knew we wanted to really get the bang for our buck since those tickets coming up weren't cheap so we ordered a couple drinks at a bar so we could sit at the window. 

We sat at the window for a full rotation and it was so cool seeing the city all lit up at night. 

We had such a blast showing Michael and Robin around. The next day they checked out of their hotel and came to our house for breakfast. The kids and I went to church, but they hung out with Michael at the house and even stayed and had lunch with us before they headed back home to Oregon. 

Staycation With The Darby's - Day 1

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!