In the spring Marie suggested we should do something fun to celebrate turning 70, and said a cute destination is Leavenworth, Washington. I’ve never been but have heard a lot about it from friends who have, so said sure, let’s do it. We booked for two nights and drove down last week.

It was time for an early lunch when we hit Trino’s Mexican Restaurant in Oroville, then we proceeded straight to the Icicle Resort where we arrived around 3:00 PM. We were thrilled to see our huge two-bedroom condo where they’d basically thought of everything a person could need. Just outside the window we saw the pool and hot tub, both heated.

The person at the desk said it was about a fifteen-minute walk into town, and so we thought that’d be nice after our drive. However they’d had a huge dump of snow that morning so the sidewalks weren’t shovelled and in places we had to go out onto the highway to be able to make our way forward. By the time we arrived the cute little town’s trees and stores were all lit up and it looked magical.

We needed liquor so walked back to get our car and drove to the Safeway where it took forever to make up our minds given the vast assortment. I settled on a bottle of a pre-mixed margarita by a company called On the Rocks. We had a drink back at the condo, then drove to town and looked for a place for dinner.

Even though we were in a Bavarian town we decided to eat Italian food, and it was delicious. The place is called Visconti’s and is upstairs and felt all cozy. I ended my chicken and mushroom fettuccini meal with a delicious, strong Irish coffee.

On Thursday we started the day with an attempt at eating the breakfast, which was included, but it wasn’t good, so we just ate a bowl of raisin bran, then headed to Das Thrift Haus for a bit of shopping. I bought two tops for $4 each, and then we went into the cute town and looked at the price of chi chi items in the stores and laughed a bit.

We stopped in at a photographic gallery and admired the landscapes. The artist was there and so we chatted, and of course the topic of the election arose. We said yes what a strange result, and he explained no, not really as you know, Robert Kennedy has a lot of really good ideas. We said huh! He added Elon Musk is really going to clean up some of the bureaucracy, and we said you are probably right.

When we left, we said wow, we sure had that person pegged wrong. Of course we should’ve taken the hint never to speak about politics when we saw a huge, fat man in a T shirt decorated with the stars and stripes and Trump written across it. They are everywhere down there. I said to Marie never say “cream” just say “half and half” or we’ll be outed and shot. Ditto “sack” and not “bag” or “a fifth” versus “a mickey.”

After thoroughly browsing the town, we returned and decided to be brave and hop into the hot tub. We found two big white robes in the closet, donned our bathing suits and shoes, grabbed towels and ran out the back, tip toed through the snow, and unlocked the gate. We removed the bubble wrap cover and ahhhh! Lovely pulsing hot water and steam rising all around. We looked like those snow monkeys in Japan.

We ate German food at Andreas Keller that night and were thrilled to have an old German man playing accordion. He played the Chicken Dance, and we loved doing the clap clap clap clap at the appropriate places. It appeared he was happy with our participation. I’m sure some nights he gets nothing but duds sitting there.

The next morning, we checked out and made our way back, however in Wenatchee we missed a road sign, and then I randomly said “turn left” which Marie did. Later she asked why I said that, and I asked her why she listened when she knew I had no sense of direction. Suffice to say we were badly lost but found good Samaritans who drove ahead of us until we got to the right exit where they waved us on.

Thanks, Americans. We may not understand them, but as we see time and again, when someone needs help, good people step in.