Peggy and I have been married for 37 years today, a astounding testament to her tenacity. If I had been married to me, I would have told myself to go jump in the lake a long time ago.
We weren’t going to do anything productive on our anniversary so we decided to do some exploring by vehicle. We started by driving a bit west on Chumstick Loop until we got to a road that was clearly shown on our Gazetteer as being paved and allegedly circling the north shore of Fish Lake. Initially, the road was paved but soon deteriorated into a single-lane dust and gravel track. Some 5 miles down the bumpy and noisy section, we encountered a sturdy Forest Service gate that sent us back over the same miserable road we had just driven. We were starting to think there may not be any way out of the valley where we were camped except WA-207 which we have already seen.
Foiled in our first foray into the unknown, we then went west a bit further on Chumstick Loop until we got to WA-207. We have seen the part of 207 that runs between this intersection and US-2 so we turned north and started a big counterclockwise circle around Lake Wenatchee. The scenery along this road consists of massive rock outcroppings and mountains, lake and river overlooks along with some sections of old-growth forest right off the edge of the highway. Once past the lake, the road continues alongside the Little Wenatchee River and starts climbing into the Cascades. It is pretty spiffy scenery.
After about 20 miles, we turned around and headed back toward the Chumstick/WA-207 intersection but were waylaid by driving down a skinny local road running alongside the nice houses bordering the lake. Some of the places can hardly be referred to as the “cabin at the lake” because they have layouts of about 4000 square feet and closely resemble wood castles. Their views of the lake and surrounding mountains are spectacular.
We were running out of roads to be flummoxed on and we were saved by a timely call from our daughter, Dana. We were still interested in driving and we felt we needed to be rewarded with dinner out on our anniversary so we agreed to meet her in Wenatchee for dinner at Stone Gastro Pub.
Their porter is okay. The fries that come with their fish and chips were enjoyed by all because there was an ample supply to share. Unfortunately, their fish had a coating that stuck to the paper tray liner and kind of fell apart when irritated in the slightest with a fork. Peggy had the mussels and indicated they were just okay. Dana had a pasta dish but did not voice an opinion. Lightweight dinner and porter here for 3 was $80 with tip. I give them a C on my completely arbitrary scale of restaurant food.
After dinner we drove back to Leavenworth TT, stopping for fuel on the way home. Arriving at the trailer while it was still light, I tackled the waste tank dumping and utility disconnection for the trailer since we will be buggering off from here tomorrow.
We shot a few pictures along the way which you can see if you click here

Today our plan was to go exploring on local highways. We have found in the past that just picking a direction and going that way often results in views of great scenery and architecture along rarely used routes. Today we decided to attempt to go east from our camping spot at Leavenworth Thousand Trails.
We have a DeLorme Gazetteer, a map of Washington that allegedly accurately shows all the roads, parks, boat ramps, campgrounds and other good stuff. We noted that the first road available to us was about 15 miles south down the Chumstick Highway (no kidding) so we set off towards our day of back-country exploration. According to our map, we could take FR 7801 east all the way to the Columbia River which is maybe 30 from the Chumstick. The map also indicated the road was paved. The map was wrong. About five miles up FR 7801, which the locals have mysteriously marked Mary’s Mountain Road, the paving abruptly stops and the dirt began. We returned to the Chumstick, went south a few miles and turned east on Eagle Creek Road which on the map was shown as not being paved. It was paved, at least for the first 5.5 miles. Again, we were turned around and returned to the Chumstick.
Dana, our daughter, then called us and let us know that she was going to be in Cashmere around 3:00 PM and, since we were not having a lot of success going east, we agreed to meet her at a restaurant called Azul Agave. The food was pretty good although I would not order the tortilla soup again. They do make a good mango margarita and their tomatillo sauce is great.
After dining, we resumed our exploration and Dana went home to nap a bit before she had to be back to Badger Mountain Brewery to augment the staff on their extremely busy trivia night. We crossed the Wenatchee River at Cashmere and attempted to take a road that was depicted as paved on our map up Nahahum Canyon and on into the town of Peshastin. Five miles in we encountered the now all too familiar gravel and dirt and once again we turned around and retraced our steps.
The valleys and canyons we drove up today were bordered by beautiful scenery but, since our Gazetteer lies, we got to see ’em all twice.
We took a few pix you can see if you click here

Our daughter, Dana, contacted us this morning and informed us she would be driving through Leavenworth so we hastily arranged to meet her for breakfast at a place called Wild Huckleberries. Peggy and I loaded ourselves into Charlotte and took the gorgeous drive down WA-207 and left on US-2 through Tumwater Canyon and into Leavenworth.
Wild Huckleberries was my choice for breakfast based on my perusal of the internet regarding good chicken fried steak available locally. We all know that everything one reads on the internet is true.
Strangely, it seems the internet may have some defective information about this place. It is located at the edge of a golf course and the view from the table was terrific until some of the golfers came wandering up the fairway swatting awkwardly at their balls which would go off in unintended directions. Much cheating was observed. Some folks would merely get their ball in the proximity of the little hole before picking it up and skulking away. Several individuals were spotted that were crashing around in the brush way off the fairway in vain attempts to find their errant shots.
The dress code appears to be less stringent here because some folks were not wearing the stupid puffy pants and horrible hats usually found in these venues. After watching several groups of golfers swinging their bats and clobbering their balls, the food arrived. My breakfast had the special, manhole-cover sized pancakes, a small chunk of chicken fried steak, hash browns and eggs. The eggs and hash browns were good but the chicken fried steak was only nominal and the enormous pancakes were created in such a way that they absolutely will not absorb any syrup. If you want syrup with your giant pancakes here, drink it directly from the pitcher. My advice is that Wild Huckleberries ain’t great and it ain’t cheap. Dining for 2 was about $40 because Dana and Peggy split a plate.
We finished up at the restaurant. Peggy and Dana then wanted to go clothes shopping, something yours truly refuses to take part in. The girls quickly formulated a plan which was to take me to the Badger Mountain Brewery in Wenatchee and leave me in the care of the brew master who was busy cleaning and sterilizing his fermenter. I tried not to bother the poor guy and was careful to stay out of his way but he was still very nice, giving me a couple beers for QC purposes. The beer was very tasty.
After a couple hours, Dana and Peggy returned and we walked from the brewery to the taproom, a distance of about 150 feet. I ordered a round of porter to keep me from dying of thirst and it was also very good. It was then that Dana took us to her work desk which is above the taproom in a gun store. The gun store was right up my alley and I fantasized about walking out with several of them.
After perusing the guns, we departed for the return drive of about 30 miles back to our RV spot north of Leavenworth. Fortunately, Peggy was available for designated driver status because I was feeling quite happy and unstable.

This was the scheduled day for Safelite to come by our RV spot at TT Leavenworth to replace the windshield in our pickup, Charlotte. A big rock fell off an oncoming gravel truck and did a nasty to the glass on August 3 as we were cruising down US-2 on the way here from Electric City. When I made the appointment last week, the girl asked me several questions. She wanted to know if Monday, August 8th between 8:00 AM and noon would be okay. She asked if the windshield had a “Super Duty” logo at the top of the windshield. She inquired about tinting at the top of the windshield. I replied that the date would be great. The “Super Duty” logo needed to be on the replacement glass. The top of the windshield should be tinted just like the old windshield.
This morning we got a text that the Safelite guys were on their way and they arrived about 8:10. Unfortunately, my 4 Questions game with the girl on the phone a few days ago was for naught. The replacement windshield did not have the “Super Duty” logo nor was the top tinted like our factory windshield.
Since we did not wish to wait another week for the proper windshield to arrive, we told the installers to go ahead with replacement. They gave me my $50 deductible back in exchange for their office staff’s bungled ordering. It is the only time I have ever wished I had a higher comprehensive coverage deductible.
The installers were really good. They had the old windshield out and the new glass installed in about 25 minutes. I can recommend Safelite installers to others but they should make sure the morons in the office understand their wishes prior to getting off the phone or they may end up with something inconsistent with their wishes.
Right after the Safelite guys finished up, it started to rain. We spent the remainder of the day lounging around the trailer. This retirement stuff is rugged.

After much lounging around and pleasant activity yesterday, I was compelled to do a bit of trailer maintenance today. There was little that could interest my readers, if any, about travel trailer maintenance performed today.
I dumped the holding tanks. We serviced the trailer battery. We took one of the trailer’s propane tanks which was empty over to the campground propane filling station and had it filled. It was quite mundane.
We did get to barbecue some chicken and burgers tonight and it was glorious. I love this retirement stuff.

We started out the day with no agenda so it is fortunate that our daughter, Dana, and her boyfriend, Devon, were nice enough to come visit us at our RV spot in the Leavenworth Thousand Trails. We were saved from any substantial driving for almost the whole day.
We had plenty of time during the morning to tough it out with a leisurely breakfast, showers and some wonderfully unproductive bird and squirrel watching. Dana and Devon showed up in the early afternoon and we spent some time hobnobbing and drinking before deciding on a trip over to nearby Lake Wenatchee.
Peggy and I went to Lake Wenatchee with her nephew, Ian, back in April. At that time there was ample snow on the surrounding mountains, a placid lake surface with little wind and almost no people in the area. Since there was no waiting for anything, we even purchased a Washington State Parks yearly pass for $30.
It was a bit different this time. When all of us arrived today, the campgrounds are quite full, the beach was packed with seemingly happy but almost alabaster colored Washingtonians, the wind was blowing about 20 knots, many boats rocked upon the lake surface and there was no snow in sight. It was still beautiful despite the crowds. I noted they let dogs onto the beach and all of them seemed delighted to be there.
We returned to our trailer for dinner and we had some nice steaks. It was a good day today. I feel great about not getting anything productive accomplished.
There are a couple pictures of our important issue if you click here

One of the mundane tasks required of full-time RV travel is shopping in strange communities. While Peggy loves all aspects of shopping except check-out, I loathe all forms of shopping and consider it just above root canal work and proctometer probes on my list of least favorite things to do. Today was a shopping day.
We drove about 30 miles into Wenatchee to start our fun. Our first stop was at Les Schwab Tires to check prices on replacement tires for our daughter’s Subaru Outback. The best they could do for four steel-belted radials of the appropriate size was $620. We continued on to Costco where we found they had Bridgestones on sale for around $450. We went into the main Costco store to shop and cogitate on the tire cost. After less than $200 (a record), we stopped by the store food facility and decided to purchase the Costco tires while eating our Polish dogs.
It looks like Dana will soon be sporting new radials on her Subaru as soon as Costco has the tires in stock. From Costco we went to a Jiffy Lube to get Charlotte’s oil changed. I normally have this work done on Charlotte’s diesel engine by Ford but the tiny Wenatchee dealership, Town Ford, indicated they will not be able to schedule our oil change until after we have left town. I am at a loss to figure out how a Ford dealership in a small town could be so busy that customers need to wait two weeks for an oil change, a process easily accomplished in 20 minutes. The guys at Jiffy Lube hopped right on our vehicle and about 15 minutes after driving in we were driving out with new filters and four gallons of new oil in the crankcase. It was also about $50 cheaper than having Ford make us wait before changing our oil.
Now we were perplexed since we had little other stuff we needed to do so we unanimously chose to go to the nearby Badger Mountain Brewing, our daughter’s place of work and all-around great air-conditioned venue. Dana happened to be there and introduced us to her co-workers and John, the brewmaster. After a few really tasty porters, John generously offered us an opportunity to take a tour of the brewery which is behind the tap room.
John must have a penchant for gorgeous stainless steel hardware because the brewing gear is just magnificent but quite complex. Shiny tanks joined with sparkling piping and coupling hardware are truly impressive. The best part of this, from my standpoint at least, is this beautiful hardware makes for very tasty porter. They have several fermenting tanks here and they are putting them to good use.
Badger Mountain is a relatively new operation and John, being one talented with the processes of making plain old sugar into great, tasty alcohol, has acquired the most impressive still I have ever seen. Not only is the engineering elegant, the combination of stainless steel and bright copper components is spectacular. His gear looks like something I would love to have in my garage not necessarily to use it but to instead just to have my buddies come by and admire the setup.
I don’t believe Badger Mountain has a distillery license due to the bizarre and arcane Washington state regulations regarding alcohol manufacture but I can state that they do have the correct gear for the work. They cannot sell commercial booze products yet but the regulations do not forbid a little non-sales fooling around with grain alcohol and John seems to know how the gear works. Guys like this make life interesting. While almost anybody can make bread from grain, only the truly sharp can use grain to make tasty beverages and John seems to be one of those blessed with this talent.
You can see a picture of the still and the operator if you click here

We were quite lazy this morning, awaking late and having a nice breakfast and leisurely showers. We had not really formulated any plans for today and we stuck to the agenda. Naps were taken. Reading was done. Loafing was king.
Our daughter, Dana, got off work at about 5:30 PM and we decided to take her to dinner in nearby Cashmere, WA. There is a brew house there called Milepost 111 where we have dined and had drinks before so we chose to meet her there.
Milepost 111 has not less than 24 types of draught beer available and the food is pretty good. I had clam strips and shrimp with truffle fries and they were more than satisfactory. Service was good. Some words of warning to any readers: the flights of assorted beers, stouts and ales here are much more expensive than just an ordinary draught so choose what you want and don’t go exploring. The desserts are also pricey so, if you are inclined to get a dessert, go someplace else. Also, from past experience I found the barbecue sauce here is quite tasty but if it does not list sauce on your selected menu item, the schmucks charge six bits for little bitty tubs of the stuff without telling anybody. You will discover this when you get the check.
There are a couple pix of today’s important stuff to see if you click here

Today was a travel day. We organized all our stuff, put it away in the Invader and pulled stakes at Coulee Playland Resort. We drove southwest on WA-155 through the Grand Coulee and past Dry Falls in Coulee City before joining US-2 again. Turning west on US-2, we passed over rolling hills of sage scrub for quite some time before being warned of an upcoming construction project ahead where we would be delayed by a flagperson-controlled one lane section. We were still moving along at about 60 mph before seeing the flagperson when we were passed by a dump truck going east. Right as he approached us, a chunk of rock bigger than a golf ball tumbled off his rear fender, bounced once in the road giving the particle some spin and flew up to punch a large crater into the driver’s side of our windshield. It is directly in front of my line-of-sight when driving. I believe I muttered something like “Golly!” or “Drat!” but really it was probably something a little more forceful and liberating. Regrettably, it could have been f___, sh__, go_____it or coc_____er smashed my window, the bas____!
We soon encountered the flagperson controlling the road and stopped for about 10 minutes. The work is progressing in a steep decline called Armour Draw where the road drops from about 2500′ to 1200′ elevation and it happens all within just a few miles. We were happy not to be going east because it is a steep climb.
Once we got to the bottom of the hill, we continued on until we hit the Columbia River near Chelan, WA. At the river, US-2 joins US-97 and turns south to Wenatchee. There we split from US-97 and continued on US-2 west up toward the Cascade Range. After about 30 miles, we turned north on WA-207 for about a 10 mile spin to the Thousand Trails Leavenworth Resort.
This is the second time we have been to this facility – we passed through here in April 2016 at the outset of our Great Basin tour we took this year. Very little has changed since we were here before other than it is not snowing and there are more campground loops open. Since we were in a new loop (for us), I crept about in the campground, circling like a fat shark, looking for a spot that had full hookups AND satellite TV reception. Much scrutiny was given to the options available for us before we decided and selected space number 58. Although the space has full hookups, it was well after we had set up our fifth wheel trailer before we found that my sense of direction was faulty and the satellite dish was unable to see the satellites necessary for TV reception due to the abundant pines in the campground. It appears we will be doing without TV for the next 9 days. This part of the world is quite pretty and I am quite sure we can get through without the TV for a while. It seems our only stuff to watch recently is Donald Trump putting his foot in his mouth so I believe we can get by for the duration.
We had not been set up for long when our daughter, Dana, who lives nearby, arrived in her new/used Subaru Outback. It is the first time we have seen her recent purchase and it was great to see our kid for the first time in four and a half months. Stupidly, I noted her recent purchase could probably benefit from tire replacement but Dana has a new job and may not be able to afford new radials at this point in her life. We may be able to solve this problem creatively.
There are pix of today’s highway fun which you can see if you click here

As usual, I had preconceived notions about what the countryside up the north side of the Columbia River above Grand Coulee Dam looks like so I had grim expectations of a drive through that country. In accordance with what typically occurs in this situation, I was completely wrong. I expected nothing but rolling hills with wheat covering them. There was a little bit of that but the rest was gorgeous.
We started out the day doing the laundry but, due to Peggy’s efficiency with this onerous task, we were soon done and had the bulk of the afternoon for exploring. We initially headed back southeast toward the bucolic Wilbur but we turned off before we got there only missing our concealed turn once before we got on the correct road east. After just a few miles we turned north on WA-21.
We were in wheat fields with an elevation around 2500′ for a bit but soon the road dove into a canyon and down to around 1500′ where we found the Keller Ferry. The ferry is operated by the state and is free. It takes about 10 minutes from the time you get on the ferry until you drive off on the other side of Lake Roosevelt which is what they call the Columbia River above Grand Coulee Dam. There is a very steep hill pulling up and away from the ferry. Right after the hill, the road turns away from the Columbia and skirts the Sanpoli River which I had never heard of before today. Bluffs, lakes, rivers, forests, pastures, mountains and prairies can all be found along this road and the really great part is they are all only about 5 minutes from each other. There was one strange bit along this road. For about 3 or 4 miles we crossed through what looked like a migration of grasshoppers or locusts or death bugs ambling across the road and away from the river. There were some big specimens in the group and they made little popping noises as we drove over the dozens we squished.
We continued up WA-21 until we came to Cache Creek Road. There we turned west and crossed a little 3200′ pass before descending into Nespelem. Again, this road is a great one for scenery although it does have some extended climbs and descents. Some corners have speed limits of 20 mph or slower. We successfully navigated the curves and soon arrived in Nespelem.
Nespelem is an ordinary tiny town and we did not spot anything interesting there so we turned south on WA-155 back toward Grand Coulee Dam. More spectacular scenery was lining the road as 155 passes down the east side of the Columbia River below the dam. We crossed the Columbia near Elmer City, climbed the grade alongside the dam and drove into the town of Grand Coulee where we stopped for diesel.
We were just about to leave the gas station and head back to our Invader a few miles south in Electric City when a little hobbit of a woman came up to my passenger window to offer us help despite us never requesting any. She seemed perplexed that we did not need any help but that didn’t shake her belief that she should explain to us that she has trouble remembering the names of the local municipalities, she has many interestes and lives nearby. Many subjects continued to be elaborated upon while I was desperately giving hand signs to Peggy to start the truck and leave. After a while, Peggy finally had heard enough disjointed bits of data and started our diesel motor, put it in Drive and got us away from the fountain of information. It was a narrow escape.
We took a few pictures along the way and you can see them if you click here