Slice of Germany & Mosquitos in the Pacific Northwest - July 8, 2019
From Seattle, we headed east to work our way back to Denver. Instead of taking Interstate 90, we took Route 2 over Stevens Pass through the national forest. It was definitely a wonderful scenic route, but the highlight of our day was coming across the little town of Leavenworth, Washington. As we were driving through the town, it took only seconds for us to decide to make an unplanned stop and we were so glad that we did.
The whole town of Leavenworth is designed as a Bavarian village, including the Safeway grocery store and McDonald’s. One glance and we thought we had been plopped down in Germany. Of course we had to stop! Front Street was lined with bakeries, restaurants, hotels and a beer garden. There is even a Nutcracker Museum.
We strolled along Front Street and stopped in a bakery to buy some apple strudel. There was an accordion player performing in the Front Street Park, so we headed over there to sit and enjoy the music while we ate our strudel. The performer, Kerry Christensen, is a world class yodeler in both Alpine and Western yodeling. We thoroughly enjoyed listening to him for almost an hour. He was kind enough to humor us by trying to remember how to play a song we requested “Fürstenfeld”, a song that was popular at beer festivals around 1990, when we lived over in Germany. We really appreciated it, as it brought back fond memories.
Kerry's bio writeup says that he performed at Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center from 1983 to 1990. Later it occurred to us that we may have seen him perform there. Our honeymoon was in Walt Disney World in 1985. We don’t remember all the details from that long ago, but we’re positive we visited the Germany section of Epcot and listened to the music there. It’s a small world after all. Now you have that song stuck in your head, don't you?
We would have stayed in Leavenworth longer, but we still had quite a few miles to cover to reach our camping spot for the night and wanted to get set up before dark. However, we continued to listen to Kerry’s yodeling as we drove along from the CD that we bought. Our destination for the day was a free camping site at Rose Lake, Idaho. This was another spot found through the Campendium app. Rose Lake, near Cataldo, Idaho, is managed by Idaho’s Department of Fish and Game as part of the Coeur d’Alene River WMA. There is a boat ramp for the lake along with a small parking lot and a vault toilet. The posted signs say that camping is allowed for up to three days. We managed to find a somewhat level spot with a view of the lake and set up for the night.
Just as we started to sit down at our camping table outside to eat our dinner, the mosquitos showed up. So we moved dinner to inside our Red Tail Lodge. Somehow we managed to bring a whole swarm of mosquitos into the van with us. Needless to say we spent the next several hours trying to swat and kill all the mosquitos inside the van. By the time we wanted to go to bed, there were still quite a few mosquitos buzzing around inside the van. We tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep. There was no electric hookups so we did not have the air conditioning running, which meant with only the fan running to keep us cool, we could not comfortably crawl under the covers to get away from the mosquitos. As soon as we started to fall asleep, another mosquito would buzz by our heads and we would instinctively slap ourselves in the face. By morning we were covered with bites. It was the first time we did not get a good night’s sleep in the van. The picture of the mosquitos was taken inside the van the following morning.
Between opening up the van the next morning and driving down the highway with the windows rolled down, we managed to get the rest of the mosquitos out of the van so they were not a problem the next night. However, the first thing we did in the morning was to order a small bug zapper (unpaid link) for inside of the van from Amazon just in case we get mosquitos or other insects inside the van again. Thank you Sean and Kristy of Long Long Honeymoon for your recommendations on your #loloho gear page. We have since used the zapper inside the van and it is surprisingly quiet. However, we have only gotten a handful of bugs inside the van since we started using it, not near the quantity of mosquitos that we had at Rose Lake.
A lack of sleep and bug bites did not stop us from enjoying the view the next day of Rose Lake in the morning sun, with the fishermen in their boats and the great blue heron looking in the shallow water for his breakfast. Would we camp there again in the future? We definitely would, but next time we will be sure to have our bug zapper, fly swatter and citronella candle with us.
Kerry Christensen was gracious enough to allow us to record part of his performance for our YouTube channel: Yodeler Kerry Christensen
Also check out our video Seattle, Washington – July 7, 2019
(RB)