Lake Chelan

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We had a comfortable night in our lovely room looking out over the Leavenworth Valley along the Wenatchee River. After an excellent breakfast of lemon soufflé, nectarines, grapes, sausage, fruit juice and coffee we said farewell to our most hospitable hostess at the Rohrbach B&B and headed down to the town of Leavenworth for a good look around. Even though the town has been created specifically for the purpose of reviving it, it has a most authentic German theme and obviously brings in huge crowds for the various festivals it holds. Three times it was voted Christmas Town of the year for the US.

We left around midday and headed off towards Wenatchee, a town of 32000 along the Columbia River. We were surprised to find that along the entire route were vineyards and orchards of cherries, apples and pears. The river terraces are covered with crops grown in barren looking stony soil with rocky hills and mountains above. The hill faces were dotted with fir trees, forest, or burnt out forest. This area regularly has forest fires and one near Wenatchee has been burning for over a week and the smoke is thick in the area depending which way the wind is blowing. These are not small fires, they cover up to tens of thousands of acres with some homes having to be evacuated.

Our route continued along the Columbia River which has been dammed to form the Lake Entiat. It is not unlike our Lake Dunstan with roads on either side, vineyards up the rocky slopes and rock outcrop above.

With the help of Lena (the GPS voice) and Don’s very good description we wound our way up Lake Chelan for 20kms to arrive at our accommodation for the next 6 days. We are down a steep drive between the road and the lake, with the house barely 3m from the water. Don gave us a tour of the property and answered our many questions then we were on our own to enjoy the view across the lake, to unpack and spread out. We have more than enough room to relax both in and out of the house and it is quite unique to be within metres of the lake with the continuous lapping of the lake. We now just need to get ourselves oriented.

But first, we needed to get food so we set off back to Lake Chelan town and did some grocery shopping before heading back and enjoying wine and nibbles outside beside the water. We’ll see what eventuates for the next few days.

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Photos

House on Lake Chelan
You can't get much closer than this to the water