NW Vacation: Day 1

We left at the crack of dawn and flew away…

Our kids felt so big as they handled their own gear—each has a rolling duffle bag and a back pack. Jimmer even wanted to do more than his fair share by taking my bag as well as his. Such chivalry!We arrived in Spokane and drove a few more hours in our rental van to our first destination, Chelan. Chelan is a growing resort town across the Cascade Mountains from Seattle--about midway between Seattle and Spokane. Since I forgot my dad’s careful directions to get to his house (and since I somehow forgot to pack the map we put in a very *special* place so we’d remember to pack it), we followed the Google directions from Joe’s Blackberry. Google must not have known that we were driving a minivan (as oppposed to a 4 x 4) and sent us on this road in the middle of two crops.
The road “pavement” consisted of about 6 inches of soft dust. We were very lucky to not get stuck. Just when we were laughing about this road (which is referred to on our new *real* map as an “unimproved foot path”), we saw this coming at us...on our single-lane "roadway".SQUEEZE!

The “road” eventually turned into rocks, deep grooves and a bunch of switchbacks. It spit us out somewhere closer to our destination…where we still made pretty good time getting to Chelan! Here's our view! Lots of apple orchards here as you can see by the neat lines of greenery (if you click on it for a closer look).

Once we arrived, the kids jumped in the pool and were not heard from for a long time.Our adventure begins!