Labor Day Washington Exploration - Leavenworth

I love to travel. There are so many great places out there. Taking a drive to Leavenworth in my little convertible driving through steven's pass with kid rock blasting on the radio was amazing. The mountains are gorgeous and experiencing the wenatchee river wasn't so bad either.

When my husband and I got there we drove around town over and over again trying to find a parking spot. This must be a nice place because it seems nobody leaves. When we arrived of course I am thinking about food but what part of the day am I not thinking about that? Yes, I eat a lot!  We started off with a trip to the Cafe Christa to see what the German food was all about. My goal was to find something healthy to eat which it seemed was nearly impossible unless I had ordered a plate of lettuce. We shared a cup of goulash, the frigadelle (German meatloaf) and the Kartoffelpuffer (potato pancakes with weisswurst). Not exactly the type of food I would be eating at home but not the worst choice either.

Next was the hat store. Kind of a cool place. Here are a couple of our favorite hats....

 

So randy's favorite is the king hat for himself but I personally think the curly hair is awesome. He says it looks too natural.

 

I can't say my hats are as funny but lets face it I am more concerned about cute then funny. I did get a picture with the hat on the left and some pink glasses on but it reminded me too much of when I was a little kid and wore mickey mouse glasses. Yes I was the biggest nerd! I would show a picture but I think it has been banned from the internet. 

After the hat store we went into a hippie store. Now I can't be certain if that was the name or not it's getting kind of blurry but it might have been. Randy made fun of me because I took a picture of every quote in the store. some are a bit hard to read on picture so here are a few basic ones. Yes I know I am weird but somebody has to play the part.

I am kind of a sucker for quotes lately. I guess it helps keep my mind on track. I have been working really hard to get rid of my nagging negative self talk that I have somehow developed so reading positive quotes is very helpful. It seems getting rid of a bad habit like that is not exactly so easy. 

Next stop was the wine tasting. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures or even the name of the winery we went to because I was too busy sipping the glass. Yummy! I am a sucker for great wine. 

We did stop by the chocolate factory but thought it was kinda lame that it wasn't filled with german chocolates. So I took their free sample of fudge which was smaller then my finger tip and headed out the door. 

After that was a little stop by Cured by Visconti's and of course I had to try a piece of the buffalo jerky. Not too bad except I almost broke my teeth. 

To take away the pain in my teeth we now walked by the art in the park where they were selling a bunch of paintings and photos of washington and I wanted to buy every picture.

Then we had to turn around so I could stop by the cup and kettle tea shop. I am sure my wallet would of thanked me for missing it but what can we say. How was I supposed to pick just one tea when they made all of them sound amazing! I bought so much they gave me a free cup of tea to go. My mouth is still recovering from my first sip of tea in my new mug...ouch! From what I could taste with a burnt mouth it was very yummy through.

If you don't know my husband he manages a beer and cigar store so yes he loves beer. We stopped by the Icicle and got a sample of each. 

We did order a veggie plate and you can imagine how excited I was to find the healthiest thing of the day. 

Beers we tasted: 

Khoas Kolsch (german blonde ale)

Colchuck wheat (american wheat)

Freund Festbier (german amber lager)

Bootjack IPA (indian pale ale)

Priebe Porter (american porter)

Don't ask me to pronounce the german names because I failed spanish in high school and can only imagine how german would go. I will leave that to the professionals. I was kind of partial to the first 2 beers but the porter wasn't so bad either. 

Well I will have to cut this a little short which I am sure you are thankful and skip to dinner. The lady at the winery suggest we try South which is a mexican restaurant. I am proud I made a pretty decent choice, yes I did think of making a bad choice but talked myself out of it knowing it would not of made me feel good. It was not a lot of food and it was very good. 

We took a little different route on the way back and this time drove through snoqualamie pass with stevie ray blasting on the radio. Not too bad for a day trip. Ended up home a little past my bedtime but still enough sleep to PR on my clean the next day at 185lbs. Slowly but surely it will come. Next step of course get 185lbs again but next time prettier and overhead. :)

Late Entry: 

Ok so I left out a couple things. I kinda put this together in a hurry and my boss would not of liked it if I was late for work because I was too busy blogging. My husband mentioned the cheese shop we went to. Now not remembering the name but it is in the comments if you are interested. Anyway they had the most incredible carmalized goat cheese! I don't know how I forgot about that. It tasted like cheese that was candy. Wow!

I also forgot to mention the fact that I tryed to find the bakery that was listed on the town map on the way out of town. Luckily for me they didn't exsist anymore because I was determined to eat a german streusel. If that is how you spell it. Anyway pastries was on my mind but since I was already on my way out of town it was too late. Definitly didn't need the calories anyway. Yes I am human and love sweets even though I can't eat them very often.