At Tom's graduation, Maddy's parents invited us to come to their cabin for a weekend. With such a busy summer at work and having to work so many weekends, this weekend was really the first opportunity that we were able to take them up on it. Tom has been there several times to go fly fishing, cross country skiing or enjoy their annual crab feed on Labor Day weekend. Because it is a full day's drive to get there, the only way we could really manage it was to fly. Saturday was the perfect day to fly. So perfect that we took a route that we have never taken before--over the Cascades between Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier. Bill often takes people for flights around Mt. St. Helens but he has never been that close to Mt. Rainier either. And I have never seen the north side of Mt. St. Helens from the air so it was quite a treat.
The first thing we did after they picked us up at the airport was to go to the Farmer's Market in Twisp. Then we went to their cabin to eat a little lunch and head out to the Chewack River to let their dogs, Emma and Ariel, go swimming. They had the best place place for Marian to make her way down to the beach all scoped out. The dogs are so funny. Emma likes to chase rocks.
And Ariel likes to chase sticks. It was a beautiful spot on the river to enjoy the afternoon.
After spending a little time at the river, we went into Winthrop. It is a cute little town that has a western theme. It is like Leavenworth in that every business in Leavenworth has to look like it is in Bavaria. Every business in Winthrop has to look like it is in the Old West. We stopped at a glass blowing shop, a book store and had some drinks at the Old Schoolhouse Brewery. They had some cutouts to take pictures so we had a little fun with that. Marian really wanted to do the picture in "drag". She and Pete have often gone to Halloween parties dressed as the opposite sex and have always won the best costume award. She was disappointed that she couldn't get herself high enough to be the cowboy in the picture.
After that we went back to their house to enjoy the view from their deck, have a nice dinner together and play games in the evening.
The next morning, we went to the place that Marian rides horses. She is in a horse therapy program trying to help with her stroke recovery. They have a lot of accommodations for handicapped people to be able to ride. They have a ramp for her to get up to sit on the horse and she has a special stirrup on her saddle and special reins to be able to ride. Then we went up to Sun Mountain Lodge to enjoy the view from that part of the valley and have a little lunch. Then it was time to come home.
On the way up to Winthrop, we saw a portion of the wildfire near Ellensburg with some hotspots still burning. On the way home, we wanted to land in Ellensburg for fuel and got to see how really close the fire got to Ellensburg. There were something like 50 homes and 25 outbuilding that were lost in the fire. And it is scary how close it actually got to Ellensburg.
So it was nice to go see a part of Washington that we hadn't seen before and to get to spend more time with Maddy's family and get to know them a little better as well.
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