Inland Northwest 2022, Part Two: Leavenworth / Second Biannual Family Vacation

[Adapted from email sent 7:13 pm] [Click here for Inland Northwest 2022, Part One]

Leavenworth: Day One Left to right: me; my oldest sister Angel (she'll be 53 in 9 days); Stephanie, and my niece, Angel's third child, Britni (31)—Stephanie is Britni's best friend, incidentally the only person at this "Second Biannual Family Vacation" who was not related either by blood, or marriage, or romantic attachment. We're all taking apple whiskey shots provided by Angel, who pointedly put hers in a coffee mug even though she was still quite open about it being whiskey.


The huge, seven-bedroom house we all shared as a vacation rental in Leavenworth was the same one the rest of the family had used for what was then thought to be the "First Annual Family Vacation," two years ago to the week, in September 2020. I was the only one there this year who did not stay overnight last time, because it was fucking still 2020 and I was not about to stay inside with anyone outside of my own household at the time. (I still think it was nuts that the rest of them did, but whatever. There are people out there who think it was still nuts for us to do it now. For what it's worth, I did a home test both Friday before leaving Seattle and on Monday before heading to Leavenworth, as did both Dad and Sherri; Shobhit also tested before leaving Seattle for Leavenworth on Monday, and I even had extra tests available, as did others there.) Last time, I did drive out to Leavenworth for a day visit, just without spending time in the house except to go use the bathroom with a mask on. Anyway! Doing this again only one year later proved prohibitively difficult, as most were not ready to plan as far ahead as was necessary to make this happen again in 2021, so last year the frequency was changed to every other year. This year everyone seemed to agree that the house was nicer and cleaner in 2020, probably easier for the owners and managers to pull off because at the time they were buffering at least 24 hours between rentals. They're not doing that anymore, and apparently they aren't keeping up maintenance very well either, because the room Shobhit and I were put in, the smallest in the house in fact, was also the single room with no working electricity: none of the lights worked, and none of the outlets worked. We got ahold of the management company, and they got some workers to come out—one guy first, who then called another guy in, and neither of them could get any of it to work. But, my other sister, Gina, found an extension cord, and I pulled in a standing lamp from the TV room area just outside our room, and we made it work. Still, it was a little bit annoying. I personally paid over $400 for this—our share alone! We may be getting a partial refund for the inconvenience, and if we do it was promised to come to Shobhit and me. I can certainly live with that! In that case I guess I'll be grateful for the inconvenience.


Leavenworth: Day Two I'll say this for the house location: you can't beat the view, here seen early-ish on Tuesday morning. That's the Wenatchee River, as seen from the backyard. There's actually quite a few houses dotting the hillside on either side of the river. This house seems to have been built in a very strategic location, where none of the other houses can be seen. You feel like you're all by yourself out in the woods on the river flowing through the mountains.


Gina poses for me in her Tuesday outfit, which, amazingly, she just found at a thrift store in Vancouver, Washington only a couple weeks ago. The best part, which is hard to see here, i that just under the front collar is a tuft of chest hair.


A whole bunch of us took an outing late Tuesday afternoon to a place called Smallwoods Harvest, which had a quasi-pumpkin patch going on out front. It's a farmers market, petting zoo, and children's playground all in one. I loved their bathroom door, which could not be any cornier.


With several family members around, I said, "I have a strange request! Are there four people who will pose with me in that?" My niece, Britni (far right), said, "I want to! I was afraid to say anything." Maybe I should start offering lessons in shamelessness, because there is no reason to be afraid to do that. I mean, look how much fun this picture is!


Another gorgeous shot of the Wenatchee River and the mountains beyond—not even too horribly marred by the wildfire smoke that did mar the visit just a bit. This view is off the Highway 2 bridge over the river, across which took us straight into "Downtown" Leavenworth. To the right you can see the local wastewater treatment plant. Fun!


So there is literally a shop in Leavenworth called WooHoo Winery. Their theme seems to be obnoxious bachelorette parties.


It's my new favorite Christmas Tree ornament! If you've never been to Leavenworth, Washington, the best way to describe it might be "entire town that is a theme park, without rides." It's all Bavarian themed, and attracts tourists year-round. It is also famous for its festiveness around Christmas, which might explain the year-round Christmas store there called Kris Kringl. Christmas is my favorite time of year, so this store was predictably my favorite. To my delight, they even had a section of sexy merman ornaments. (But no, I did not buy one. They cost $43! Too much! I did, however, buy this one, which was shockingly only $4.)


Exterior view of Riverside Lodge at dusk. Can you find Shobhit?


Leavenworth: Day Three The Riverside Vacation Home properties, of which there are three right next to each other, all have access to a path down to a small sandy beach on the riverbank. This shot kind of looks like I am teaching my grandniece, Jaycee (12), how to throw a fishing line. But, it was literally the other way around. As you might have expected, I didn't particularly get the hang of it.


Shobhit and I drove across the Highway 2 bridge into town, then parked at Enchantment Park, from which we walked trails through Blackbird Island, and then into the adjacent Waterfront Park, where we found a place to have a picnic lunch on the rocks directly across the Wenatchee River from the Riverside Lodge where we stayed. My eldest niece, Brandi (37), told me later she stood in the window for a while flipping us off, but we never saw her. 🙁


The requisite family portrait: four generations. Generation 1: Dad and Sherri; easy to spot—they're the two old people.
Generation 2: my sisters, one sister's wife, myself and my husband; easy to spot—we're the five middle-aged people.
Generation 3: four of my nieces and nephews, and their respective spouses or partners; easy to spot—they're the Millennials.
Generation 4: five of my grandnieces and grandnephews, a sixth of which was at the house but did not get into the shot because he was having a meltdown.

Inland Northwest 2022, Part One: Wallace, Idaho, Moses Lake, Wenatchee

[Adapted from email sent 6:07 pm] Wallace, Idaho: Day One For the last six visits I had in Wallace, Idaho—between December 2017 and June 2021, so for the past five years—I've stayed at the quite-comfortable Hercules Inn; I even got Dad and Sherri to book one of the other rooms while I stayed in one of my own when we went there for Father's Day weekend last year. Unfortunately, although we fully intended to stay there again for this visit, they were booked up for the needed weekend once we called. So, for the first time in several years, we had to come up with a new place to stay, and Dad and Sherri found this two-bedroom house vacation rental called the "Wallace Church House," which kind of redefined the word "quirky." Apparently built originally in 1905 as a church, it was later also "once a coffee shop and art studio," which also explains the very odd kitchen, which was one element that was much worse than the standard full kitchens in the Hercules Inn units—but, at least the Church House has this great outdoor courtyard, not to mention a large communal living room and dining space, both of which were very useful for hosting my brother's family for his 50th birthday.
That said, after I posted a video walkthrough of the house, my niece responded with "I'm scared for you guys."


Maybe the best "quirk" of the Wallace Church House: the "Bubblegum Jesus" hanging on the wall, courtesy of the property owners, apparently chewed by a family of three that included a 4-year-old. It was like the Pike Place Market Gum Wall had a literal "come to Jesus moment."


Wallace, Idaho: Day Two Wallace is an entire town on the National Register of Historic Places (that is broadly its own story), but its rich history that still largely feeds its local tourism industry is focused largely on mining and prostitution: you can still tour one of its old brothels. Shobhit and I did the tour a decade and a half ago; Dad and Sherri did the same many years ago on their own. Still, Sherri wanted a picture in front of the Oasis Bordello so I could post it and say "Putting Grandma to work!" I told her to give me a "sexy pose" and this was what she gave me.


Saturday the 24th was my brother's 50th birthday—I am the youngest of four, now the only one still left in his forties (three and a half years to go!). After we had big birthday parties for both my sisters in Olympia for their 50th birthdays in 2019 and 2021, my dad called me up to say maybe we should go see Christopher for his 50th as that's only fair . . . I was like: you've got a point. Christopher has five children, most of them grown, and all but one of them made it to join for the brunch my dad had planned for Saturday. His oldest, who now has two children of her own, came over from Spokane. Dad made eggs benedict for all of us. My brother and his three boys all had two helpings. They don't likely get meals like this often, so it was actually special.


My brother ordered this shirt special to wear on his birthday.


The requisite family portrait: four generations. Generation 1: Dad and Sherri; easy to spot—they're the two old people.
Generation 2: Me, and my brother Christopher: opposite ends of the front row.
Generation 3: Four of my brother's five kids: Nikki (30), to the left of my dad; then the three boys in the back, from left to right: Christian (19), Tristen (22) and Braeden (16).
Generation 4: Nikki's kids, in center-front: Cheyanna and Elijah (7 and 1 by the end of the year). This was the first time Dad and Sherri and I met Elijah, now the ninth of my grandnieces and grandnephews, with two more currently on the way.


This huge cage was in the Church House courtyard. Of course I had to get a picture with me in it. Dad wanted to get in with me but he recently strained his back and couldn't do it.


Wallace, Idaho: Day Three So Mom and Bill, who died in 2020 and 2021 respectively, moved to Wallace in 2002, and I visited there one to two times a year starting in 2003, making this the 20th year in which I've consistently been there—and only now, due to Sherri's interest, have I finally gone inside the local Northern Pacific Railway Depot Museum. It should be noted that although at last count Wallace has a population of only 784, the region's local mining history had its population peak at nearly 4,000 in 1940. Then-President Theodore Roosevelt visited Wallace in 1903 (when the population was around 2,300—still way more than today) and that is what the American flag seen in the photo above is from. The museum guide told us there were 45 states in the union at the time, but the flag had 46 stars in anticipation of Oklahoma (even though I just discovered Oklahoma wasn't actually admitted until 1907, four years later). The Depot building itself was physically moved and restored in 1986 (Wallace population ~1,400), to make way for the construction of the I-90 viaduct overpass that was used as an alternative to demolishing the town after it was successfully added to the National Historic Register. We asked what used to be at its current location, and unsurprisingly, it was another brothel.  


Moses Lake Two nights in Wallace is enough for me, and Dad and Sherri felt the same way; we had to head to Leavenworth on Monday, but instead of staying a third night in Wallace on Sunday, we drove first to Moses Lake instead. Until now Moses Lake had only ever been a town I drove straight through, so this was my first time staying overnight there. Dad wanted to go back to this restaurant called Michael's on the Lake that he and Sherri had been to before, so we went there for a late lunch/early dinner. I really wanted to sit out in the outdoor seating but we were told there were no available tables (even though a bunch of them were empty) so we wound up sitting in the bar. The menu was overwhelmingly meat-centric but I must say, they accommodated me by swapping out the meat for zucchini in their "Street Tacos" and they were delicious.


We all stayed at a pretty nondescript Best Western hotel in Moses Lake, and that evening Dad and I killed some time by going over to the local Japanese Peace Garden. It was fine.


Wenatchee On Monday, after driving out of Moses Lake, we stopped in Wenatchee to visit Ohme Gardens, which is honestly less a botanical garden than it is a series of uneven stone walkways, stone steps and stone formations. Dad and Sherri apparently visited decades ago, but Sherri now has balance issues and uses a cane so she mostly had to wait for Dad and me to explore the place. Dad and I were separated momentarily when he went to check on her, during which time I set my timer to take this shot of myself on the "Hobbit Bench."


Cashmere We also stopped briefly in Cashmere at the Liberty Orchards Applets & Cotlets Factory. We didn't take the factory tour, but I got this shot through the window of a closed door, and both Sherri and I had a few of the delicious samples set out, and bought some gift boxes. (I was delighted to discover these candies do not contain gelatin as I had suspected, and are in fact vegan.) This company is kind of a longtime Washington State local institution, and was recently slated to be shut down; the company was then sold to a Russian food conglomerate just last year. As of now, though, the product is still being produced in this factory in Cashmere.

[Click here for Inland Northwest 2022, Part Two]