Icicle River ... that's hot!

We spent most of last week near Leavenworth, which is a Bavarian-theme town at the eastern entrance to Stevens Pass through the Washington Cascades. I would say we were just chillin', but it climbed up to 95 or more every day. We took our travel trailer and arrived at Icicle River RV Park on Wednesday afternoon.

The park was at less than 50% occupation that evening -- no neighbors.

An unusually cool and rainy June resulted in higher-than-normal water levels for

mid-July. Early bookers get sites just a few feet from the banks of the river,

visible in the center background of the photo below.

This park is about four miles out of town and follows

the Bavarian theme set by the town, right down to the bathrooms!

Each morning, we took a 30 - 45 minute walk before breakfast.

Most days, we walked upstream on the shoulder of Icicle River Road.

Overlooking the Icicle River drainage is a ridge known locally

as Sleeping Lady. Do you see her?

One morning, we took our walk through the grounds of the

Sleeping Lady Resort, which was immediately adjacent to the RV park.

They host corporate and religious retreats and summer music camps.

We saw a doe and her fawn (look closely just below the head of the doe) ...

... and a fisher of men.

Janie was worried when he spotted me ...

... but fortunately this big one got away.

I congratulated him for the good effort.

We spent one day checking out downtown

Leavenworth. Above is the city center park.

We listened to the community band rehearse for awhile.

We also took in the river walk through a nature preserve

and bird sanctuary along the Wenatchee River

just behind downtown.

The businesses present a variety of Bavarian architecture and the city

maintains hundreds of flower pots. We had dinner one night

at the restaurant through the arched doorway in the center.

This is a favorite stop a few miles up the Wenatchee River canyon on the way to

Stevens Pass. This amazing candy store has every type of fudge and taffy you

ever dreamed of. The most irresistable draw for me was the fudge.

Camper Janie reads as she relaxes in the air-conditioned trailer.

She is also enjoying some Luxury Nut Fudge. Yummy!

Apparently enboldened and strengthened by the fudge, Camper

Janie tries to push over a tree in the way just prior to our departure.

We bid you adieu from Icicle River RV Park. We left Sunday

morning, by which time, the park was completely full. Our site, which

was a lonely spot on Wednesday, is clear in the back by the tree. 

Janie Gets a New Car; Loren Celebrates 85th

Janie has found it necessary to go to Bellingham more frequently recently as she and Julie take turns checking on their father, Loren. Sometimes she drives alone and we were worried about the reliability of her 1996 Subaru Outback. So we decided to get her into an exciting new car -- one that was daring and different ... a 2006 Subaru Outback.

Well, it's a new color anyway.



We went to Bellingham in late August to help celebrate Loren's 85th birthday. The people on the left are Julie's son, Jeremy and his wife, Beckie.



The party was hosted by Andy & Erin Vitaljic, long-time friends of Loren, at their beautiful home on Sandy Point, a few miles south of Ferndale.

Round Two

We set this page up a couple of years ago intending to keep you updated on what was happening back here on the home front. Then we discovered PicasaWeb, which is a way to put up oodles of pictures without a lot of verbiage. This seemed like a lot of extra work to accomplish the same end. Nevertheless, we shall try again, in part because your blog pages want us to have an "identity" in the blogosphere in order to post comments. But also because it seems like it could be fun. It will be a work in progress for some time as we get your help in trying to make our page appear and function as smoothly as yours do. You can see all the extra photos posted on PicasaWeb by going to http://picasaweb.google.com/mhmccain .