25 May – Leavenworth to Rimrock Lake

Awoke to an overcast day with a slight headache (where did that come from I wonder J).  Had brekkie and walked back into the main street. 

 We found a little Christmas shop called Kris Kringl (Norm & Wendy had told us about this shop so we were eager to have a look inside).  We were blown away by the amazing array of Christmas decorations.  Everything from little tree hangings to 5 foot, self-snowing Christmas trees (using a gentle spray of little white foam balls).  The most intriguing section though, was the toy villages.  It was enough to bring the child out in you.  Both of us were in our element.  They had different themes that you could collect pieces to make your own toy village, traditional snow village, alpine village (complete with animated ski slope & cable car), Dickens village, a Whoville (Grinch who Stole Christmas), even a Halloween Style.  We bought a few little pieces from the North Pole collection, with the thought of starting our own little village back in Tassie.

Leavenworth is a lovely little town, although a little bit “Disneyland”-like.  We got a Starbuck’s cappuccino (with a thermos traveller) and went on our way.

We noted that the traffic coming in as we were leaving was quite heavy, due to the long weekend.  Saw some people white-water rafting on the river (dang it must be cold in that water).

Before reaching Yakima, we saw a hillside of huge wind generators.   

We had lunch in Yakima, fuelled up the RV and stocked up on some provisions as we expect to find it hard to get into any parks for the next couple of days.  Yakima was a typical outback town and a little bit run down. The scenery around this area is, again, fairly bleak and barren.  We continued on Highway 12 toward Packard and later in the afternoon we started looking for potential camp sites.  We ended up in a forestry area near Rimrock Lake and chose a site near a river running past.  The sites are fairly uneven with no services but they are free (or well we hope they are).  There are a number of other campers in the area and while we were setting up there were a couple of young lads target practising there semi-auto rifle.  They packed up & moved on (thank goodness).  After a quick walk, dinner was cooked & bed looked quite attractive.