We arrived at Callie’s, Stephanie’s sister, house around 10 PM and caught up. I had never met Callie before and Stephanie hadn’t seen her since Thanksgiving. We talked for an hour over some wine and then went to a local bar called Horseshoe Saloon for a drink. The next morning we took our time to get ready and went downtown to Pike Place Market. It was a huge market with every fruit, vegetable, meat, and fish you could want in hundreds of booths.
After wandering around for 30 minutes taking in the sights, sounds, and smells, we found a nice seafood restaurant called Lowell’s where we had lunch on the water.
Salmon croquettes
After lunch, Callie took us to see the famous bubble gum wall near Pike Place Market. There were hundreds of thousands of pieces of gum stuck on this alleyway. It was very vibrant and smelled like bubble gum. What a sight!
Callie then took us to see the famous Fremont Troll in Seattle. It was a giant concrete sculpture under the George Washington Memorial Bridge.
Gotta pay the troll toll
After a day of sightseeing, we were both exhausted and headed home to take a nap. After we woke up, we had dinner and then played a game of Catan before officially going to bed for the evening.
~Sister Sister~
The next morning we went over to one of Callie’s coworkers for Fourth of July brunch. The house was really cool with a big garden and three chickens! We watched HGTV and talked to her coworkers until lunch was ready. Shortly after lunch, I got a really bad stomach ache and we had to take a Uber home. I napped for a few hours while Stephanie updated the blog and ordered Pizza Hut. When I finally woke up and felt better, we watched fireworks from Callie’s balcony.
The next morning, we woke up, said bye to Callie and headed for Leavenworth, WA to visit Stephanie’s friend Crissy and her boyfriend Robbes. Leavenworth was an old logging town that was headed to become desolate when they stopped logging. They decided to make downtown Leavenworth look like a Bavarian village. It soon became a tourist destination and now is a thriving little town. We got there around noon and Crissy had lunch waiting for us. We then drove down to Icicle Creek for a day of tubing. The water was pretty chilly, but when we got warmed up from the sun, it felt just right. The tubing trip took us about 3 hours and we walked back to Crissy’s for dinner. We had salmon tacos for dinner and then had a long soak in their warm tub before retiring for the evening. The next morning we woke up around 8 AM and got ready for a hike about 15 minutes from town. Crissy told Stephanie that it was a nice lake hike so she wouldn’t be deterred, but it was an 8 mile round-trip hike with 2400 feet of elevation gain.
Crissy hiked in flip-flops
We took around 3 hours to get to Colchuck Lake and it was worth it and so beautiful. The water was a deep turquoise like nothing we’d ever seen before. We found a nice lunch rock, had lunch, and then Crissy and I went for a swim in the icy waters of Colchuck Lake.
We sunned ourselves on the rock until we were dry and then hiked back to the car. Once we got back to their house, we went to a sausage place called Muchen Haus. It was quite good and they had apple cider sauerkraut that was mouthwatering. We then walked over to the Icicle Brewery for some local craft beer. Around 10, when the brewery shut down we called it a night and went home. The next day we slept in and caught up on Orange Is The New Black. Around 2, we showered and went into downtown to do some wine tastings. We went back to Crissy and Robbes and they took us to their friend’s birthday party on the outskirts of Leavenworth. After socializing for a few hours, we headed home and promptly fell asleep. The next morning, we said goodbye to Crissy and Robbes and packed up the car and headed to North Cascades National Park, north of Leavenworth. We found an awesome campsite near a lake called Diablo Lake. We set up our site and relaxed for a bit and then took a short hike around the lake.
We finished our game of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective while we cooked dinner. After dinner, we played a few games of rummy before we went to bed for the night. The next morning we made breakfast and packed up
Out next destination was 8 hours away in Missoula, MT, where we planned to stay in a local KOA campground for the night. Washington was another beautiful state and we are looking forward to visiting Callie and Crissy again.
Garrett & Stephanie 