All is well at the clinic and we have a prescription to go pickup at Safeway. We head over and it is a supermarket with a pharmacy inside. The boys leave us to get the script and some drinks for the day, and they go get gas and fill the tire. We are still waiting on the script by the time the boys are done and they come into the grocery store to see a cart filled with drinks and some snacks we probably don't need. Everyone uses the restroom, we grab our script, pay for our stuff and head out! We are starting the day a bit late at 9:30, with 6.5 hours of driving, but we are not deterred.
To keep the tradition alive from yesterday, as we head out of town we see a strange man running with a backpack and a blanket over his head. We pass by him TWICE somehow? Are there more than one of these men? Is he really fast? Are we driving in circles? We'll never know...
The only stops for today are an AW restaurant (Adam and Abby love rootbeer) and a town called Levenworth that is setup like a little dutch or bavarian town. We have been to a place like this before on the last roadtrip called Solvang in CA where Abby was mistaken for a local. On our way, there are lots of side roads and old routes to check out and we come across this one with plenty of room to take more abandoned or not-busy road pictures!
As we are driving along, we see a man laying on the side of the road. I say "is he ok?" and it is almost as if he hears me because he puts his hand up in a thumbs up position! I am relieved, "oh, good he must be ok.....OH, he was hitchhiking". This all happens outloud and the entire family spends the next few miles making fun of my brain fart there..
We get to AW for lunch through TONS of traffic, and everyone is happy with their selections including Abby who is yumming her root beer. We get to Levenworth shortly there after and the town is really cute. Even the McDonalds is dressed as a Bavarian! We drive through it because the only things to see are really beer and wine stops, but enjoy it all the same! We are about 2 hours from finishing Route 2 and push foward. The kids did not push through as easily as we did and had a large fight in the backseat. Something about flicking eachother and wiggling their fingers at eachother. The fight ends in a lot of anger and some tears and with both of them looking dramatically out their window. I give them credit for making it this far....Adam and I dissolved on day 2. Anyways, to get everyone back in the mood for the end of Route 2, I blast our favorite music and wield the dreaded air microphone. When the air microphone is pointed at you, you MUST sing into it. This works for everyone except Abby, but I won't give up. We are in bumper to bumper traffic at a bunch of lights so I blast the music, roll down the windows and shove the air microphone in her face. She avoids me with an irritated smile, but I won't give up. Adam, Gideon and I are dancing frantically in the car and Abby is trying desperately not to laugh. Finally, she breaks and I get a bit of singing so we can end Route 2 with some happiness. The end was really anticlimatic because it just merges into another highway. It was unlike Route 66 where you can stop on the boardwalk and take a picture to commemorate the moment. But I did get this great shot of a Route 2 sign today so we'll use this as our final picture. It was in the middle of a dust storm where Gideon saw his first tumbleweed. You would think we were in a desert the way much of WA looked today.
Now, we've been talking about getting hibachi or koren food when we get to WA for awhile. We pull into the hotel and there is a Koren BBQ joint right in the same lot! Perfect! We do a ton of laundry and get some rest before we head for dinner 7:30 our time, 10:30 Eastern. The food is excellent and even Gideon finishes his meal. The owners were great too. A lovely end to Route 2. We get some rest as we have a lot of hiking to do at North Cascades tomorrow. Adam gets his CPAP machine to work with some creative engineering. We cannot find a place to pick up what we need for his CPAP but plan to buy it on Amazon and ship to a hotel soon...we'll keep you updated...
Summary: Sometimes the end of the Route is anti-climactic, singing makes everything better and Adam is a good engineer.