I woke up at 7:30 which was okay as I had a bit of extra time to talk with my cousin.  She and Roxy have home-based businesses and they start work at 10 so John and I wanted to be out of their hair before then.  Carol and I shared coffee and some more memories and debates until John got up and showered. We left about 9:30 and drove the short distance to Wenatchee.

Roxy is like me and dislikes having her photo taken, but she graciously allowed one quick one. (Well, I sort of grabbed her if I am being truthful.  But she didn’t hit me, so I guess it was sort of all right.)

Miss Mollie wasn’t too sure she wanted her photo taken this morning either.

We had to drive through the Snoqualmie and Blewett Passes to get over the Cascades to Wenatchee and were so very happy to be driving in snow.  NOT!

                                                  White on white on white.

We took Highway 18 to 90 to 970 to 97 north which connects to Highway 2 a few miles east of the Bavarian Village of Leavenworth.  This is also a ski area and since there was lots of snow there were lots of people.  Leavenworth is famous for its Christmas lights.  Many people take bus tours down here to see them in December.After we had lunch we walked down the main street to check out the buildings and the window displays.  We even went into a store and bought a couple of things, which is highly unusual for us. The Wenatchee Valley is an apple producing area.  The hillsides all around are covered in trees – apples, pears; and grapes for some local wineries as well.  There must have been thousands of bins stored in this lot.  I took five photos of the stacks of apple bins as we drove past.

This cold-storage house claims to be the world’s largest and the writing on the wall says it can store the equivalent of 1000 cars (train cars that would be) of apples.  That’s a lot of fruit folks. Tomorrow we cross the border back into Canada and our trip will almost be at an end.  Sigh.