leavenworth. . . washington's bavarian village

On Thursday of our camping trip week, we planned to spend the day in Leavenworth. It's an old town that the Great Northern Railroad once went through. It was a logging town for a while until the railroad was rerouted. Then it kind of died off. In the 1960's, they came up with a plan to revitalize the town by creating it to look like a Bavarian village. The mountains around it certainly give it that "Swiss Alps feel" and so they began changing the facades of all the buildings to make them fit the part.

We followed this river that was near the campground. It was so pretty with lots of rapids. I get rather mesmerized by flowing water of any kind. I find it completely relaxing.

We parked near this old Catholic church. It's not used as a church anymore, and is actually part of a hotel complex, but I thought it looked pretty impressive there. I kind of have a thing for old churches.

The main street in Leavenworth is full of all sorts of trinket shops. Everything you can imagine. Some of them are more Bavarian than others, but there's definitely something for everyone. There are lots of restaurants and bakeries too. My favorite shop was the Cheesemonger's Shop. It was actually in the basement of one of the buildings. There were so many different kinds of cheeses - many I'd never heard of before - and you could taste whatever you wanted. I fell in love with the applewood smoked cheddar and Phil got to sample some liverwurst. Ewww.

We took a little break and stopped at the Danish bakery for a soft pretzel and a cannoli.

The Christmas shop was two floors of everything merry and bright.

No fake Bavarian town would be complete without at least one yodler. And in Leavenworth, they pipe the music up for the whole town to hear. This guy was pretty good, as far as yodling goes. It's not really my cup of tea, especially when the song being yodled sounds like a chicken clucking, but I heard someone say that he used to work for Disney in Epcot Center so he must know his stuff. I thought about getting my dad one of his dvd's for Christmas, but we found something much better. Stay tuned. . .

Something I really liked were all the signs for all the stores and cafes and restaurants. This Cafe Mozart sign was my favorite. I know Mozart didn't write the song "The hills are alive with the sound of music," but whenever I look at this picture, I always sing that song.

They also outdo themselves on the flowers. There were hanging baskets everywhere and beautiful displays of barrels and window boxes.

In the center of town there's a huge maypole. Huge. This picture doesn't do it justice.

Just for Phil we had dinner at a German restaurant and I was reminded again of just how much I really don't like saurkraut. The rest of the food was fine, I just can't stand cabbage of any kind cooked, let alone left to sour itself.

The highlight of the day though was seeing The Sound of Music at the outdoor ampitheatre. It was a short hike uphill to get to where the seats were and we were seated by members of the cast. The background was spectacular, especially with the sunset and then the full moon that came out. The lady that played the part of Maria (who actually came down the hill singing) was excellent, the kids were great, and the whole thing was just really really good. At the end when they sang Climb Every Mountain, you felt like getting up to climb with them. I'm still singing the songs and it's going on two weeks now.

My absolute favorite part of the day was when Phil505 leaned over and said our kiss was better than the kiss the Captain gave Maria in the wedding scene.

Perhaps that's due in part to me not being a former nun in training.