Red Hair and White Knuckles

Jeff and I got a motorcycle. It's a Kawasaki KLR 650 Dual Sport (meaning it's good both off road and on road). So we decided to take a motorcycle road trip to break it in. Although if any of you have ever ridden a motorcycle for any length of time I'm sure you know that it broke us in more than anything (sore hinny).






So once we were all packed and ready to go we headed over the mountain pass and our first stop was Leavenworth. This is a popular tourist and local attraction as it is a Bavarian themed village. They have a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the winter that attracts thousands and in the summer there's lots of art festivals, hikes and October fest in the fall. I didn't really get any shots of the village this time as we've been here before and the couple I did get didn't really turn out well but this was a pretty cute and friendly mountain goat.

So Aplets and Cotlets are a pretty delicious treat that are quite popular in the Northwest. I'd never heard of them till I moved here. They are kind of a jelly type candy with nuts that are rolled in powdered sugar. Although I have come to know that to some it is an acquired taste and others just plain don't like them. The traditional flavors (as the name denotes) are apple and apricot, however they have a ton of different flavors and if you go to the factory which is where this picture was taken then you get to sample a tone of stuff for free. They even have new product sampling and you can take a survey and tell them what you think. It was a fun stop on our way to Winthrop. This factory is located in Cashmere, just outside of Leavenworth.

So we were almost to Winthrop when we saw this bridge and had to stop. There are a lot of these foot traffic bridges across the Columbia river and I tried to get Jeff to cross this one but try as I might he wouldn't do it. I guess I can't blame the guy as I wouldn't have done it either.






We stayed in this Shackteau, which is owned by Jeff's boss. It's right on the river and it's not fancy it's basically camping but we didn't have to set up a tent and there were sleeping pads inside which made for a comfortable night sleep. When we pulled up there was a whole family of deer sleeping under the awning.



This is the town of Winthrop which is an old west themed town, however this is actually a picture of my bad helmet hair and me locking the helmets on the bike.



Jeff had the camera as you can tell. So the background shows what this whole town basically looks like, all the restaurants and stores are all in this old west theme. The side walks are wooden and they even have some western saddles you can sit on at the ice cream shop. Somehow we didn't get as many pictures of the town as I thought but you get the idea, plus you can google it.




This guy was in front of one of the shops and we thought he was pretty cool. You can see the wooden plank sidewalk that lines the street and you get the idea that it's a pretty cool town.



There is a lodge called sunset lodge about 9 miles from town and this is the view from the lodge. This was about 7am and they were rounding up the horses for trail rides. Pretty amazing view. And just to clarify this is Eastern Washington.




So on our way home we drove over a different mountain pass, it was really cold, as you can tell there is still snow and it happened to rain on us just after this picture was taken but what an amazing site. The road was really twisty and steep going up over this pass, you kinda get the idea in the picture below.

This part of the highway was blocked because they were redoing the park that overlooks the highway, however the joy of being on a motorcycle is that you can simply drive around the gate at your own risk and get the pictures anyways, which is how we got the picture of the highway below. This was a pretty fun trip, although we were sorely unprepared in many ways (we know better know) we are already planning our next trip.