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