Wanderung 6

Pursuing Pioneer Pathways from the Potomac to the Pacific

June-August 2004

July 15 - Drive to Wenatchee, Washington

We slept in until 8, but we were both still pretty groggy and stumbling around as we had breakfast and hooked up the trailer. Unfortunately we had a long day's drive from Olympia over the Cascade Mountains to Wenatchee on the other side. That was not too far as the crow flies, but a lot longer as the roads twist in this part of the country! We picked up Interstate 90 in Seattle to head east, narrowly avoiding a backup along the way, and worked our way over the Snoqualmie Pass to get to the eastern slopes of the Cascades. The scenery and weather both changed dramatically from the western to the eastern side of the mountains. To the west we had thickly forested slopes, cloudy skies, and cool temperatures. Shortly after we crossed to the eastern slopes the skies cleared, the temperatures rose, and the trees disappeared to be replaced by dried grass and sagebrush on otherwise barren slopes. I don't expect there are many places in this world where you can experience such an abrupt shift in climate and vegetation so quickly.

We were both still very tired from the previous day and soon were exhausted with the mountain driving. I was tired enough that when faced with driving up to a high pass on a two lane highway, I bailed and decided to take a much longer roundabout route to Wenatchee that had no passes. Instead of our normal battle to vie for who gets to drive more, we were each handing over the wheel to the other person whenever we had a decent excuse. Phrases like, "I need to use the bathroom at the next rest area, so why don't you take over driving?", despite being a very bad non sequitur, occurred more than once during the day. I had the last shift driving out through the town of Wenatchee to a county campground 7 miles to the west, and when we finally arrived we found that there was some kind of a baseball tournament in town and they could only offer us one night's stay. We went to Wenatchee for a northwest area Volksmarching Conference, but I had confidently expected to get a space because so few people know about Volksmarching that I was sure that they would not overcrowd the campgrounds. But instead I was blindsided by a confounded baseball tournament!

Being just too tired to go on, we paid for the campsite for the night and set up the trailer in a stupor. The campsite was right alongside the Wenatchee River but I was too tired to enjoy it right then. In fact, after setting up the trailer I just fell into bed while Monika had a light lunch and then joined me in a Super Nap, after which we both felt almost human again. Dinner helped restore my spirits, which had been sagging a bit over the missed lunch, and we called a Good Sam campground up the river a ways and made reservations for the next 3 nights, which cheered us up considerably as we hoped to share several Volksmarches and a Volksbike over the weekend with the local folks. That evening I caught up on the journal while Monika worked on her memoirs for a while and recorded our expenditures for the last few days in a spreadsheet. We finally read a bit more of Asaro's "The Last Hawk" together before turning in for the night.

Copyright 2004 by Robert W. Holt and Elsbeth Monika Holt
Prolog Map Epilog
June 2004
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July 2004
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August 2004
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