Eastern Washington

My parents have been to Seattle quite a few times, even before Anya and I moved here. Over the years they've seen and done a lot of the stuff the area has to offer. We had to find something new to keep them busy, and one of the big things they'd never done was cross the Cascades to visit Eastern Washington.

To those of us who live in the verdant strip of land between the ocean and Cascades, "Eastern" Washington is a mythical land: a dry, sunny, deserted (both meanings of that word) place where people come from, not go to.

I'm mostly kidding, but there is a divide - both in the land and in the people. Sage brush replaces towering pines. Towns have rodeos. People wear cowboy hats without irony. "Regular" and "decaf" are the only types of coffee available.

These types of cultural learnings aside, the purpose of our trip was to visit two places that cater exclusively to tourists - most of them from the wet side of the mountains.

Cave B winery is a place Anya and I visited last year with great pictorial results. It's in a spectacular location high above the Columbia River about 2.5 hours from Seattle. Unusually, it was cloudy when we were there. Oh well - the views were maybe a little less spectacular, but the restaurant still served great food and the wine still tasted good.

Following an overnight in the orchard-surrounded town of Wenatchee, the self-proclaimed "Apple Capitol of the World," we moved on to the faux-Bavarian village of Leavenworth, WA. Apparently when the railroad business dried up in the 60's the town languished until someone had to idea to transform it into a tourist trap. Aside from the architecture and lederhosen it doesn't really bear much resemblance to the real Bavaria. Judging from the hordes of people getting off the tourist busses to admire the Christmas lights, the plan worked nonetheless.

It continues to impress me how one can drive only a short distance from Seattle over well-maintained passes and end up in an environment that's so different. Mountains are remarkable things.

Because it was cloudy we kept our photo-taking to a minimum. The ones we did end up with are here.