The time comes to leave for the appointment for Abby and Gideon and I go take the van to get breakfast at a local donut shop, Donut Parade. As we head in to the shop there's a dog across the street that's upset about something and is barking away. Eventually I see out of the corner of my eye what looks like the whole dog over the fence in their yard. Gideon and I watch it again and man does this dog have some jumping ability. It's almost like the owners have custom measured the height of the fence to keep the dog in. We head into the shopt and they have a lot of different flavors including a pineapple/jalapeno fitter and peach fritter! We pick up a dozen and head back to get Abby and Court.
The conclusion of Abby's appointment is that they aren't sure but they give us an antibiotic anyway to be safe so Abby and Court go get that filled while Gideon and I go get gas and fill up air in the problematic tire, again. After we pick up the girls, we finally start heading out of the city again. Yet again we are almost immediately greeted by road construction signs but this time at least they are misleading and it's not that bad. We cruise along eating our donuts and enjoying the views. We get to one of the original alignment side roads and it is beautifully abandoned so we take the time to take some pictures. This whole area looks more like the stereotypical southwest desert rather than what I would expect for Washington. It comes complete with canyons! One of them is what they call Dry Falls which is supposedly one of the largest waterfalls historically speaking. You have to throw in that caveat because there is no water to be had here for the most part right now but apparently a rather large river used to flow through here at the end of the last ice age. The desert land is broken up by patchs of land that's irrigated and appears to be growing wheat. At one point during the drive a strong wind kicks up and we are dragged into a dust storm which has its own kind of rustic charm. Also its own terror inducing moments when visibility is greatly reduced. At one point during this portion before lunch there is a man sitting on the side of the road leaning up against a backpack, just sitting there. Court gets worried and says that she hopes he's alright to which the guy gives her a thumbs up almost as if answering her concerned question. Seconds later it hits her, and me too, that he was hitch hiking and the thumbs up was asking for a ride. Everyone has a good laugh at our collective ignorance.
Gideon finds that there's an A&W that we should reach around 1PM so we decide to lunch there since we have been trying to get into one for Abby to have the fresh root beer. The path down to it is clogged with traffic but we finally get there and order more food than we probably should have but what the heck, we don't get to get to these often. Abby tries her first sip of the root beer while we wait for the food to be completed and decides that it's worth the wait. I don't disagree. I couldn't tell you what it is about it that's so much better but it just tastes better from these places. Gideon decides that his burger is not top 10 worthy but he would eat one again and is forced to try a bit of the chili dog. He's not a huge fan of the chili dog and to be honest, neither are the rest of us. It's just alright. That being said, the rest of the food was pretty good.
After lunch we pull into a town called Leavenworth which, much like Solvang in our original trip, has made itself over to be cosmetically like a Bavarian town. There's a lot of cute architecture and the general feel of the town is quaint. Even the big chains that have set up shop here, McDonalds for example, have been brought into the act and have changed from their normal facade to something more Germanic. It's really cute here and we evaluate getting out for a walk down the main street but looking at the list of shops it's pretty much all beer halls, wine bars and delis. Since we've already eaten, this didn't make much sense. Still we cruised through the town and enjoyed the look very much.
We contine down the road and drive through some mountain passes following a river that gave us a lot of very pretty views of rapids and sections of the river that widen out a bit and slow down. A one point we stop at a pull out to get some pictures and we walk down to the river's edge. Along the path there's an older couple just sitting on the rocks near the edge. Court insists that they were trying to get it on and maybe they were. The only thing I know for sure is that the man was taking pictures of the woman but the angle in which he was taking the photos he would have missed the rapids entirely and just gotten the earthen berm behind her. Not sure that she's going to get the results she hoped for. There is also the section at the end where there's a lot of downhill coming into the coastal area of the state. There are some gorgeous views along with some real jerk drivers. I guess you can't have it all.
We pull in to the hotel after trying to find some kind of Asian food for Court tonight since she has been craving it and it's exceptionally good on the Pacific coast. There hasn't been anything that she's been sold on just yet but as we pull in we see that there's a Korean food joint in the same plaza! We check in and get some laundry done while we wait for the lunch food baby to pass some before heading over to eat at Korea House BBQ and Grill. We order some food and enjoy the small sides that they bring out while we wait for the main dishes to be cooked. The main food comes out and some of the dishes are wrong but whatever, this happens. They bring us the food we had ordered and left the food we didn't since they were going to throw it out anyway at this point. We end up with veritable feast of Korean food. It's good Korean food too! We are a bit spoiled by having eaten at a local place that's amazing so it's hard to beat them but it's still very good. We all leave with very full bellies. Back to the room to wrap up the evening and type up these blogs!