Bavarian Glory

Leavenworth

Hello,

Tuesday 5th
‘How do we get into Leavenworth’? We asked a person for directions. ‘It’s easy. However, you first have to commit a crime, a very serious one at that,” he answered, rather smugly, we thought. Until 2005, they incarcerated only the most hardened criminals in Kansas; currently, it is a medium rated lock-up. ‘Aha’, we thought, ‘he’s thinking prison; we’re thinking hiking two hours northeast of Seattle. We wanted to tell him that we did not think it funny but it wasn’t a bad answer, we suppose. We’re probably miffed that we did not have a good retort.

In the Stuart Mountain Range, lies a quaint Bavarian village, Leavenworth. Unfortunately, it shares its moniker with the infamous prison. Without having visited the jail, we would venture that this is a more beautiful place and by a wide margin, too. One drives through/over Steven’s Pass and shortly thereafter, arrives in the village—a city actually. The architecture emulates Bavaria together with a sprinkling of German words and phrases. It is a shopper’s paradise for the cute, odd and colorful knickknacks that many tourists believe completes a holiday. Add a variety of German restaurants, ample accommodation, the surrounding peaks and it is clearly an idyllic spot.
Lakeside and Golden Tree

We are here for something different from the foregoing but you know that by now. Today’s hike was an easy one, 8-Mile Lake. (On the morrow, we intend to reach one of the peaks shown in an attached photo’.) The name takes away the need to give you the statistics bit, other than it was a comfortable elevation gain of about 1,400 feet. The foliage and colors were inspiring, the trail enjoyable and the lake and surrounding rocks good to visit.


The latter, of course, presented an opportunity for us to climb. The mountains are much like smaller Tetons, quite spectacular. It is another very attractive part of the United States.

Siesta at the waters edge.

We met some people on the trail today. It’s amazing what happens in segments ranging from two to ten minutes. One group was from Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant. Leavenworth is a great place to host a corporate conference by the way, we think. We ended up discussing very briefly, our stockholding in the company, some thoughts, etc…Can you imagine what these delegates might say at the next meeting. ‘Can you believe it? Even these ‘dumb mountain people’ are questioning our growth rate and patent expirations?’

It reminded us of meeting a group of youngsters at Capitol Reef in Utah during June. They were not typical hikers, three young women and a guy with his dog. There was a prohibition against pets on the trail. Perhaps, they can’t read, we thought. The women, in form and figure, were very pleasing to the eye—not that we noticed. What was unusual? The lasses wore bikinis, rather immodest clothing, we thought. We had never seen that on the trail before. However, we hardly noticed it either. We have learned that it is not good to stare at women although they do everything possible to entice men to do just that. We have also learned the danger of a wondering eye. Most importantly, when we are on the edge of a cliff, outside edge with our editor standing next to us, we definitely keep our eyes in a safe place.

One woman approached us and posed a question. ‘Like will we like see like giant trees on like the trail?’ Not wishing to embarrass her, we pared the question of repetitious and redundant words and explained. ‘ It is not usual to spot such specimens in a desert. It would be better to hike in Sequoia and the Redwood forests of California,’ we suggested. Our editor mumbled quietly, ‘go take a hike’. Mountains, rocks & lakes.... what more!

We glimpsed across and noticed much rolling of the eyes. We felt some relief. We were no longer in line to be bumped off the cliff edge…yet. Like we felt like greatly like relieved…

As we mentioned, we have some interesting times on the slopes.



Cheers,
Jenni and Jeffrey

We are thrilled to publicly wish our son, Robbie, much success and continuing growth as he embarks on his career at KPMG, commencing today—a position he landed through hard work and ingenuity.