Trip to Leavenworth

We celebrated the end of summer and our ninth anniversary by taking a road trip to Leavenworth, WA. This is somewhere I've always wanted to visit (partly because I'm Swiss and I was hoping for a little taste of home!)

Of course, you can't go to the states without making a quick stop here:

After our shopping trip, we headed east and drove through Steven's Pass.

We finally arrived in Leavenworth and the Enzian Inn. The kids were fascinated (creeped out?!) by the "dead animals" in the lobby.


Translation anyone?
Our room was cute! Elisabeth loved it - and especially the faces on the beds. Can you see 'em?

Grosspapa an Oncle Reudi:

After we'd settled in to our room we went in search of something to eat. We ended up at Gustav's. Which was good but stinkin' expensive.
Our hunger sated, we decided to wander around a bit and explore the town.


We really wanted to eat here while we were in Leavenworth, but as it turns out, the day we finally decided to eat here, it was pouring and this place is all/mostly outside.


Leavenworth's version of a maypole:

A rare family photo.







A little Alpine Hutte - also, the closest we got to Switzerland the whole time we were away.

The Sunflowertree

I thought it was time for another posting about our sunflower. The kids planted 3 seeds this spring and since I've never had luck growing sunflowers, I really didn't think they'd grow. They all did. This one was the most successful. Look how many flowers it has!

And check out how tall it is!

Yowsers!

Entourage

I got an early morning phone call today wondering if David and Elisabeth would be free to come over and play "Celebrities." They had to come dressed like stars and bring small dogs.

Turns out Ashlie was looking for an entourage. My kids were happy to oblige!

Lots of new blog posts

It's been a fairly dry month here on projectdavid. Part of that is because my camera is acting up and I haven't been taking as many pictures. But that's not the whole story - I also had my camera dismantled while we took apart our house so I haven't been able to get on here and post the pictures we have taken.

Blogger has spread my catch up posts over several pages (ahem. Too much catch up maybe?) so I'm going to put a table of contents here.

You can read about Elisabeth's birthday treat here. Or maybe you just want to see pictures of when Uncle Rob opened his Octopus Pizza and Ice Cream Stand? We did some more berry picking around our neighborhood earlier this month and then took some unflattering but still cute pictures too.

Then we visited our friends in Chilliwack and made a full day even fuller by staying in town all day. We had some of our favorite people come for a visit and then we did lots and lots and lots of chores. oh and a few more chores. And then we finally did something holidayish and took a day trip to Bowen Island!

There! Now you're all caught up!

Day Trip to Bowen Island

On Monday we decided to do some ferry hopping. So we headed out to West Vancouver and hopped on the Bowen Island Ferry. Now, I'm a big fan of findfamilyfun.com - it's where I get a lot of my ideas from, or where I'll make sure that my ideas are kid friendly. They said that you could easily walk on the ferry and spend a day just walking around Snug Harbour. So that's exactly what we did.

Here we are waiting for our ferry to leave Horseshoe Bay.


The big ferry to Nanaimo got to leave first so then we chased it out of the harbour.

When we arrived in Snug Cove (it's a very short ferry ride!) I asked David to pose for a picture by the fence. "Look like a teenager," I said. And he did a very convincing impression of one ;)

This is the library. Most of the buildings in Snug Cove are from the days when the Steamship Company was here. They had several hundred cottages and would ferry people over by Steamship for holidays. The hey days were from the 20s to the 40s and it sounds like it was a lot of fun. And these days it makes for some awesome scenery what with all the nice buildings. A few of the cottages still exist and can be rented in a local orchard.

This is a sort of touristyshop/general store. Complete with bearded old sailor type smoking on the front porch!

Oh, and this dog that David befriended.


Andrew made friends with a fish (can you see him in the shadows?)

The computer repair store.

And a coffee roaster. Next time we'll skip this place and walk to the end of the block where the bakery is. The service at this place was awful, they were out of everything, the place needed a good scrubbing AND the coffee was too watery. But the smells from the bakery were what tricked us into going into this place.

Still, it wasn't a complete washout, my muffin was very good!

Andrew's scone was pretty, but apparently not tasty.



This building housed the credit union, but it also had advertising for a local development company. We walked up to Artisan Square later and saw some of their houses. They all have these gorgeous wood framed windows and I loved the rounded windows on this particular building. Hard to believe it's actually a rectangular concrete building with this for a facade. Gorgeous!


We did lots of walking. After walking from the docks up the hill looking for breakfast, we walked back down to the dock and into the forest. From there we found the trail to the bridge. At the Tourist centre they told us to go this way because the kids would like crossing the bridge. Ocean on one side, lagoon on the other.

It took us a while because though we had a map, everything on the map was marked, the trails in real life weren't. But that looks like the place we're looking for!


Ah yes, here's the bridge.


Just past this gorgeous fence the trail wound up to a residential area. We followed the road to Bridal Veil Falls. I was expecting something along the lines of Bridal Falls in Rosedale or Shannon Falls in Squamish.

I didn't bother taking any pictures. But it was a nice spot to let David climb and jump while we had some water and enjoyed the shade. Then we took the trail through the forest and back to the main street. By this time, we were hungry for lunch.

Too bad this place was closed. We went to Doc Morgans overlooking the harbour and had fish and chips instead.

Then, again on the advice of the lady in the tourist centre, we walked up a 300 m trail to Artisan Square. The trail is almost all straight up and has lots of stairs. But it's also through the trees and there are some good views. We got to the square - it was really pretty - and looked around.


The kids had some gelato (their reward for all the walking!) and then we booted it down to the harbour to catch the four o'clock ferry.



I think next time we might bring our car. Apparently there is an amazing beach on the far side of the island. I'd love to check out some of the developments too.