More Cascade Loop To Leavenworth

Google Maps and Android Auto in Harmony!

As mentioned breakfast is provided at Chewuch Inn so I’m in the breakfast room for 9 am as it finishes at 9.30. It is an average offering. Nothing hot other than a weird cauliflower, egg and cheese tart. Ugh. I choose half a banana, some sweetened granola and berry flavoured yoghurt.

After packing up and checking out, I fire up Google Maps for the drive ahead today. I haven’t mentioned this before this trip for the simple reason that I have finally got Maps and Android Auto working properly in sync. So far…

My pre-planned routes are all in a Word document that I bring up on my phone. I click to load Maps on the phone, which then brings up the directions. I then connect the phone to the car via USB – it must be like this even though the car and phone are paired via Bluetooth – then start Android Auto. The route then magically appears on the car’s screen. As I will find out later on the trip, any diversions or detours are found by Maps and automatically updated on screen. Plus I get spoken instructions as I drive along.

At the airport the only problem I had was that after pairing I needed to find how to give Android Auto permission to get notifications from the phone. Once that was fixed it’s worked like a dream. If you want to do similar, see my previous trips for how to program enough stops into a route to stop Maps re-routing you off your desired course, and not onto one it thinks is better.

More Nice Scenery and Good Roads

Cascade Loop road sign

Today is no different. On the way to Leavenworth I have a couple of deviations from the most direct route. Both work as planned later. South of Winthrop at Twisp, I leave Rte 20 E for WA-153 S, the East Methow Valley Highway. It’s a good drive, nothing too tricky or technical through some nice scenery. The road tracks the Methow River for most of the time, until that flows into the Columbia River near Pateros.

At that point WA-153 S ends and turn right onto US-97 S. This now tracks the Columbia River. At Azwell is the Wells Dam, and pretty big it is too. It’s a nice drive alongside the water. A good fast road with little traffic.

I turn off soon after Wells Dam onto ALT 97 for a detour off the Loop towards Chelan. The weather so far has been similar to the past few days. Sunny intervals interspersed with complete cloud cover. Temperatures however are not getting higher than the 60s.

Chelan and Wenatchee

Chelan seems a nice place. I’m guessing there’s a lot of second homes here and that it’s more of a weekend or vacation town. I wander around the town and down towards Lake Chelan. I grab a coffee and cookie for lunch – I’m still not eating much – then get back on the road. After the dam it’s still the Columbia River I’m tracking on ALT 97.

ALT-97 S and Columbia River

Then after being out in the wilderness for most of the Cascade Loop so far, I arrive at the first ‘big’ town since Seattle. Wenatchee has Pybus Public Market that appeared in a few ‘interesting places’ reviews so I thought I’d visit it. On arrival there I’m seriously under whelmed. It’s quite small but it does have a good mix of permanent and temporary retail outlets like bars, restaurants, food sellers plus arts, crafts and jewellery. Not my bag but you never know until you get there, do you? Plus it was something different to do.

After that I take the opportunity to fill with gas at a more reasonable price than I’ve seen so far on the Loop. I also visit a Dollar Tree for some $1.25 toiletries. Clearly they can’t rename it Dollar And A Quarter Tree…

Wenatchee is clearly a big town (or city). The road to Leavenworth from here is mostly dual two or three lanes. The Cascade Loop road has been almost exclusively one lane each way so far. Only nearing Leavenworth though it does it reduce to one lane each way. The road leaving Wenatchee has become US Route 2. Most of the roads on the Cascade Loop also have names as well as the official route number. Except the road I’m on now that is…

Arrival at Leavenworth

There is little of merit or interest on the way to Leavenworth on Rte 2. Non-descript and boring would be kind. I arrive at the Alpine Rivers Inn just before official check-in at 4 pm. I am concerned at its location. It is clearly outside the town, yet my research indicated the bar for dinner later was only a 15 minute walk away.

Leavenworth

So I drive out of the parking lot and into town. Putting the bar location into Maps, I quickly find it. I knew this before, but Leavenworth, for reasons I have yet to discover, is a mock Bavarian-style town. Today, it is also extremely busy with people (but it is Saturday afternoon). There are loads of families wandering the streets. There are however no parking spaces on the main street so I park up in a hotel lot, hoping not to get caught whilst I suss out the bar on foot.

I quickly walk to the Blewett Brewing Company, which I saw when I drove past it on Commercial Street, the main drag. I knew it was a pizza-only menu but wanted to look in a bit more detail, just to be sure. They are very busy at 4 pm but close at 9 pm on a Saturday – and at 8 pm Sunday to Thursday!!! Hardly worth opening to my mind. There was however a distinct lack of interesting or decent bars or restaurants in Leavenworth in pre-trip research.

I’m still happy to have pizza tonight although I won’t eat it all because they only do one size, 12 inches in eight slices. Dinner decided I go back to the car and drive back to the hotel. What I see as I drive is that there are proper paved sidewalks all the way from the hotel to the bar, so that will be OK safety-wise later in the dark.

Alpine Rivers Inn, Leavenworth

After check-in I go to my room. I am not impressed once inside. It’s $300 a night – bloody expensive – but everything in the room is cheap and nasty. No glassware just plastic and polystyrene cups, cheap tissues and toiletries, damaged décor and a very noisy fridge that I have to turn off. The aircon unit – not that I thankfully will need it – is unusable in that it sounds like a jet engine even on the lowest setting.

From what I recall I chose this hotel because the more central hotels were even more expensive (and the Alpine Rivers didn’t have bad reviews). Talk about ripping off a captive market. After sorting everything out for tomorrow, I leave for dinner around 7.20 pm.

Blewett Brewing Company

Unfortunately the bar is very busy despite the town streets now being almost deserted, in great contrast to earlier. But there are no seats at the bar itself. I have to make do with a table inside (there are outdoor tables under cover but I reckon it’ll be too chilly for that).

The lack of bar seats soon pisses me off because the grossly overweight ‘girl’ who is my server is f****** useless. She firstly doesn’t even come to the table for five minutes after I’m seated. One of the hostesses told me there was a 40 minute wait for pizzas to be served. So when the server finally arrives with a menu I mention this to her and say I want to order my pizza – and beer – as soon as possible.

But there’s another five minute wait before I get to order food and drink. It then takes the server another ten minutes to bring the beer. So 20 minutes has gone by before I get a drink. I watch her at work. It is clear the servers each have a small number of tables allocated to them to wait on. She keeps disappearing from her ‘area’ for five minutes at a time but when she re-appears she often does not have any food or drink with her. What is she doing? Or rather not doing.

The other servers are all around but mine just regularly goes AWOL. Then the pizza arrives ten minutes ‘early’ – not a problem with that – but she takes another age to bring me a second beer I requested when she brought the pizza. The pizza is very good but as expected I can’t finish it. I will take the rest away for an in-room dinner another night, maybe.

Always Sit at the Bar

My learning point from tonight is – always sit at the bar. I should have waited for a seat to come free. I did see some vacant seats at times. The point of sitting at the bar is that when you need another beer, a barman/lady will generally serve you quite quickly. Ditto food service: because you’re kind of ‘in their face’, you get served quicker.

At check time my server has so annoyed me that she gets less than 15% tip, something I learned of years ago to “send a message”. You can’t not leave a tip in the US otherwise you might get chased down the street by an angry server. This happened to a friend of mine many years ago when the service was really bad, and he left no tip, but he didn’t understand the “rules” of tipping in the US at that time.

Back at the hotel, some more diary completes the day. I reflect, five full days on, after four years away, on what a road trip is all about. The variety, the challenges, the great things and sometimes the not so great things. Life’s great tapestry, I think someone once said.

As I think I’ve written on previous trips, the way I process information, data, stuff that happens, often takes time to really sink in. It’s who I am, the way my brain works. Some times things hit me in the face immediately – I get it there and then. Other things take time for their significance to dawn. But overall, it’s just good to get away from daily life and do something different, on my own.