In keeping with my plan to write blogs about the trips and travels we enjoyed before I began writing my blog for our 2014 Cross Canada Trip, I have been working on what I call our “Eight States Trip.”
In January of 2013 we decided to go south to escape some of the BC winter. We own two time-shares and John is very good at maximizing our one week’s worth of product into a much longer time. He managed to book three weeks in the Lawrence Welk Resort in Escondido, California beginning January 17. Now, most folks that we know that go south in the winter drive straight down via the fastest route possible and arrive in southern California or Arizona in about three days. We, as you probably know well by now, do not do that. Still, we didn’t do too badly as it only took us five days to get to the resort.
We spent the first night at Chelan Falls, Washington, arriving after the sun set, which was quite pretty even from the window of the car.
We woke the next morning to a lovely day and headed southward once again.
Lake Chelan, Washington
We had heard often about the quaint Bavarian-style village of Leavenworth in the Cascade Mountains of Washington. We turned westward north of Wenatchee and went to have a look-see. The place is very popular over the Christmas holiday season because the entire village is decorated with garlands and lights. It is popular to take a bus tour to go across the line to see it. Since we were travelling through in mid-January we didn’t get the whole ‘seasonal feel’ but it looked like a cute place. We just drove around a few blocks and then continued south toward Ellensburg.
There is a viewpoint that overlooks the long Yakima Valley. Even with the light snow layer it was pretty. I think I took about six photos to capture the full length. But when I stitch them all together the image is so skinny it loses all the power of scale.
We were blessed with another lovely sunset as we drove into Bend, Oregon for the night.
The third day took us from Bend, Oregon to Red Bluff, California. We stopped for lunch at Sand Creek Station, about half-way between Chemult and Chiloquin, north of Klamath Falls. We were driving through the mountains and there was still plenty of snow around.
It wasn’t long after we crossed the border into California that we saw the lovely Mt. Shasta.
We had made plans to go into LA to visit with friends we had met on the World Cruise in 2009, but we received a message that they were sick with the flu. This provided us with an extra day, so instead of heading west, we kept going southeast through some of the old California Gold Rush areas and made a stop at Yosemite National Park.
Don Pedro Reservoir
To be continued…
Hanna Travels 