October ’23

Our last rally of the year was in Wenatchee, WA at the Wenatchee River County Park. It is a very nice clean park, trapped between a loud highway, and an active freight train line. For that reason, I would not recommend it, unless you are a very sound sleeper! But it was fine for just a few days at the rally.

We had a lovely drive up to Wenatchee, enjoying the fall colors in the forest.

Soon we were back up in Wenatchee, which was a place we visited somewhat frequently back when we lived in Yakima. We got the trailer settled and went exploring.

Hmmm, those brown hills sure seem familiar. I’m getting a bit tired of the gloomy/wet side of the state. Maybe we will retire to the sunny/dry side?

Our first morning there we got up and went to have breakfast at a golf course. Another camper had been telling us about it the night before, so we thought we’d give it a go. It was really nice, and had a heck of a view off the patio!

It was a lovely place to eat while watching activity going on in the hills and down on the river.

Then we headed up to Leavenworth. We stopped at a couple antique malls along the way, but didn’t find anything we couldn’t live without. Up in Leavenworth it was Octoberfest time, but the activities didn’t really start until the next day. This way we could wander around and enjoy it without the complete chaos of drunken visitors.

We stopped for lunch with balcony seating and a beautiful view of the river.

I ordered a lovely soup with clams, and there were SO MANY clams, it was like the clams were non-stop, some sort of magical bottomless clam dish!

Parade time!

After lunch we drove up in to the mountains a ways. Everything was so pretty with fall colors, and we saw a couple salmon swimming upstream.

We saw this guy rock climbing! That’s a big rock!

The next day we drove up to Pinnacles State Park. This was a neat park up on the dry hills with all sorts of rocks to climb around and on.

Rocks!

I didn’t notice that tree when we were setting up the photo!

Once we were done there, we wanted to get in one more activity so we headed over to Ohme Gardens. This is a private gardens where the paths wind around, over and through the hill, around rocks, beside man-made ponds, with gazebos and lookouts along the way. It’s really magical! And we happened to be there on the last day of the year!

There are all kinds of firepits and benches and paths all made of stone, built by the family who originally owned the land 80 years ago.

Quite a view!

There was beautiful fall color in the campground.

This is the view of the river behind the park. Unfortunately you can’t see the railroad tracks right on the other side of the river.

We swung through Yakima on our way back home so we could have lunch with our friend Gary. Then we drove up and cruised by our old house, just to see how it was doing. And we stopped at Los Hernandez Tamales in Union Gap for the best tamales in town. Then we headed home, leaving the brown hills of Eastern WA behind.

You know, maybe the dry brown hills just really aren’t our style. I think we’ll stay on the wet side after all.