Leavenworth, Washington State

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And so we left the lovely Vancouver. Admittedly we only spent our time in the main downtown area but we really did give it a good look and experienced what we could by foot or cycling. It is such an easy place to get around and there is so much to experience.

We caught a taxi out to the airport to get our rental car and that took half an hour to process. We then headed off south towards the border around midday and spent another hour getting through the car queue and then in at customs getting our passports, visas, photo and finger prints processed. If they had moved any slower they would have been in a coma. There's not a lot of chance of getting into the country easily so why there are 11million overstayers, who knows? We had hoped to have visited our neighbours from home on the way past White Rock but time did not permit.

From the border it was plain sailing along motor way the whole way to Everett where we turned inland. Most of the scenery had been flat farmland bordered by low lying hills with some parts looking similar to NZ. It is not densely populated, there is a lot of forest, the coast is nearby and the roads are good.

The final part of our journey was through the mountains mostly following a gorge then up over a Pass and down through another gorge. It is very attractive and quite similar to some of the European Alps we are familiar with. Unfortunately there had been a forest fire at some stage in the past and mile upon mile of the hillsides had burnt tree stumps.

We arrived at Leavenworth late in the afternoon and found our way easily to the Rohrbach B&B set up behind the town on a hill. Our very hospitable hostess settled us into a typical Swiss style house so we feel right at home. After settling in we made our way down town to have a quick look around and dinner. We'll explore some more tomorrow. If you didn't know you would swear you were in a real Bavarian town in Germany. The houses are typical, with typical carvings and decorations on the houses. It is set in a valley with mountains all around. Just think, we could save ourselves many hours of journeying by just coming here instead of always flying to Europe.

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