It’s now almost been a week since I’ve been back from Washington and only now am I managing to muster the energy to blog about it - those of you that have been kind enough to follow me via Twitter know of the entire trip in tidbits, but as per usual: here’s at least the first day of the trip ad nauseam.
Getting into Seattle very early morning on Friday the 10th, we quickly rented our car from Thrifty and were on our way toward the eastern reaches of the state. I’m always amazed how car companies never have the car you reserved and always tend to force an upgrade on you - this time it was from a Chevy Aveo to a Dodge Caliber. Needless to say, my driving for the entire week was on pins and needles, frightened that I’d manage to mangle a 30,000 dollar car. We started heading up toward US Route 2 because there were quite a few presumed ghost towns on the way out on US2 that I wanted to try to peak around.
After stopping in Sultan at Sultan’s Bakery for a early lunch (they’ve got some of the largest skillet breakfasts that I’ve ever seen) we stopped by our first “presumed” ghost town - Index, Wa. Lets just say you shouldn’t believe everything you read online - but I did manage to get some outstanding pictures of the local rainforest moss growth!
After our short stint in Index, we started heading into the Cascades. This was my first time in the Cascades, never being in Washington pass five miles away from SEA, I was having a blast. I had, once again online, heard about a old abandoned railroad tunnell, called the Cascade Tunnel, that was the site of the worst avalance disaster in US History - over 90 people perished as a avalance collided with a train on unprotected tracks. Apparently it took over 21 weeks for the area to thaw enough for people to collect the bodies - the disaster was so bad that the nearby station town had its name changed from Wellington to Tye. Years after, the railroad completely bypassed the area with a even longer and more modern tunnel and now the site is full of tons of trails and artifacts. *BEWARE* Unfortunately, about two years ago the main tunnel had a cave-in and access to the tunnel has been cordoned off from the west side - on the other hand, the east side is completely open, unguarded and prime for photos - although before anyone rushes up there from reading this blog - BEWARE. 
The tunnel apparently has dammed up with quite the lake of water somewhere within the 2.7 mile long tunnel - I went in, maybe, 1000 feet. I wouldn’t go in anymore - Lord only knows what could happen. That being said, I was estatic that I was able to find such a remote point on TOPO maps off of my iPhone! I had a blast and shot several rolls of film and digital frames - chirping off about 100 pics between my five (or so) cameras.
After my tunnel excursion we continued down US2 toward Leavenworth - our meetup point for Deanna’s parents. I was particularly interested in doing a bit of shopping in Leavenworth because of what could only be called the town’s “shtick” - facing the inevitable decline of the town after the railroad pulled out of town decades ago, it turned itself into a quaint Bavarian lookalike town on the eastern edge of the Cascades. Expecting a goofy Disneyesqe ripoff, I was pretty impressed to find actual products that I remembered from my stay in Germany - and what food I had actually managed to be pretty accurate as well. Still, no Spetzi - and so the sadness insued.
After a couple hours running around Leavenworth, we started following Deanna’s parents toward East Wenatchee to her sister’s grave. Deanna had moved to Alaska only two years after her sister passed and since then, for 15 years, she hasn’t been back to see her sister. This, above all else, was call for this trip to the Lower 48. Unbeknowst to me, my own mother had been championing to do all she could to get us down south for this visit - which is probably why they donated their miles for the trip. It meant a lot to Deanna and her family to be there, together, with her sister - and I’m glad that I was part of that. As a side note, Wenatchee has the most God-awful traffic I’ve ever seen - and their idea of city planning is a joke. It took us 30+ minutes to get from one side to another of a town that might top out with a population of 40k.
Afterwards, we headed further toward our final destination of Chewelah - heading through Farmer, another prospective ghost town on our way east. After an hour shooting at what I thought was Farmer, we found out I was shooting at an abandoned homestead that was, in fact, larger than the ghosttown of Farmer some half mile down the road in the next valley. Either way, I came out with some great photos.
Being so late in the day, we started rushing toward Chewelah to stay the night at my family’s RV. Didn’t get into town until after 10pm, but we made the first 350 mile leg of what was to become a 1300 mile trip.
The second day was primarily spent at Chewelah’s town festival, Chataqua. Deanna was extremely excited to hang out in her childhood hometown, show me the sights and enjoy the festival she had fond memories of from childhood. She got to see her old home, inside and out thanks to the current owner, the tail-end of the town parade (our long first day made sleeping in highly desireable) and spending about half the day going through the festival and meeting up with some of her mom’s old friends. After swinging around the entire festival about three complete times, we drove up toward Colville and Kettle Falls to do a bit of shopping and sight-seeing. Had dinner in Coville with her parents and my family, spending the night, once again, with my family.
Third day was much of the same - hanging out with Deanna at Chataqua - but this time with one of Deanna’s best friends from her childhood. Before doing so, it’s probably worth noting that Aidan performed a perfect swan dive, out of my hands and face first into the gravel road I was standing on. Panicing, I raced over to where my family was staying to ask the professionals what to do - thankfully I overreacted but he did look pretty scraped up and any father in the same situation (i.e. it was my fault) would’ve overreacted the same. I tell you, that line “baby’s bounce, don’t worry” only works when you’re not the one testing it out. That evening after we said our goodbyes to friends of family (who were so nice to have us do laundry over at their place - phew, stinky diapers!) we raced toward Spokane to do some (hopefully) shopping and sight-seeing. The sight-seeing got done, but like any American town, expecting anything to be open after 6pm on a Sunday was a hopeless cause. We went to the Riverfront Park, put Aidan on a 100-year-old carousel (which he hated!) and went to dinner at the wonderful Steam Plant Brewpub with Coeur d’Alene Brewery on tap.
In the end, not too shabby for the first few days - I had, at this point, bought about half a dozen microbrews to try, tried 10 tasters at Coeur d’Alene and found two abandoned locales worth several rolls of film - not too bad for a trip that was mainly for Deanna’s sake!
Blog of J. Jason Lazarus, techno-geek, retro-gamer, ranter, avid photographer & new dad.