This week we packed up the flat and headed south, first stop Leavenworth, Washington which is about 2 and half hours East of Seattle.
This town was known as a mining town in the 1860 and then a timber hub from 1890 to 1920 however after both of these industries left the area the town fell into depression with limited work and high unemployment. In 1960 a project called “LIFE” Leavenworth Improvement for Everyone was dedicated to create a community plan to reinvigorate the town. They did this by remodelling the town into a Bavarian theme which replicates Bavaria a state in Southeastern Germany and today it is amazing, the whole downtown area has some Bavarian outlook from the street signs, the hospital even “McDonalds”, the town has produced a booming tourist trade.
The stores have really unique giftware and you can get a genuine Bavarian sausage and beer. They hold several festivals throughout the year including a 3-week Oktoberfest, Christmas Lighting Festival and a Bavarian Icefest just to name a few.
The logging history is really interesting for 25 years they moved their logs down the river, they would build log walls along the river to direct the logs and some remnants of these walls are still there today. They would wait until Spring when the snow melted and then float the logs down the Wenatchee River. They moved 17 million feet of logs that equates to 3 400 fully loaded logging trucks.
I walked right past this deer, she was camouflaged pretty well, but Digby got the shot.
From Leavenworth we headed into Seattle and to the Pike Fish Market to try and get that fish throwing photo, whilst we were there the Seattle Sounders Soccer team was there and they had a fish throwing competition with the two main commentators for the game against the Toronto Football Club.
We strolled down the Gum wall alley which now has gum on all sides, when we visited in 2013 it was only one wall, so obvisously a lot of people chew gum. It looked like the walls had been cleaned down but the gum has returned.
We will spend another day in Seattle before heading south to Yosemite National Park.
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