New Years 2010

They say that you are supposed to gain wisdom with age.......well, that may or may not be true. Our adventure on New Year's Eve makes me wonder if we have really gotten any smarter. Ron and I decided to drive back up to Leavenworth to try to get some good photos of the cute little Bavarian Village while they still had their Christmas lights up.

We left our house around 9:30 PM, and started out on the 3 hour drive. It was close to 50 degrees when we left the island. Ron and I have always enjoyed driving at night......there are usually less cars on the road, and definetly not as many semi-trucks. As we turned onto Highway 2 which crosses the Cascade Mountains at Stevens Pass, we watched the temperature drop as we climbed in altitude. There were high clouds which looked more like a thin fog, because we could see the full moon during the entire drive. It was absolutely beautiful! The trees were very heavily laden with fresh snow, and everything was silent......hardly ever a car in sight. It was 22 degrees over the Pass, and the moon was so bright you almost didn't need headlights. We were wishing that we could have found a place where we could have pulled off the highway to take some pictures.....however, we were not in the mood to get stuck in the snow that night. (Our Camry thinks it's a 4-wheel drive sometimes, but that was not the night try it!)

When we arrived in Leavenworth around 12:45 AM, we pulled into a parking lot and got our cameras out and set up. Then we drove into the heart of town where we wanted to get out and take photos. It was about 1:00 AM New Year's Day, and we had figured that the party goers and fireworks watchers would all be gone by then.....boy were we wrong! Town was a zoo, filled with people who were drunker than skunks! (and a few of them smelled as bad as skunks too....) It was almost impossible to get a shot without any people in them.

There was one group of drunk people that wanted Ron to take their picture..........."we'll pay you big bucks to take our picuture" they said. They were totally shocked when Ron said that he wouldn't take their picuture! There was a couple of times that we got worried about somebody grabbing the camera. While we were there, we saw three amblulance runs.........it makes you wonder how people can be so dumb.

The photo below was taken at almost 3:00 AM.....there were still people wandering around town, and sliding down the ice hill in the town square. (they were some of the noisiest.)

Below: Ron taking a shot of the mainstreet of Leavenworth. There still wasn't very much snow, compared to what Leavenworth usually has. Maybe, just maybe we'll try to go back again before the end of January, if they get a good snow storm.

We were bundled up warm enough, that we didn't get cold......all except Ron's feet. (I think it's time to buy some good snow boots!)

We headed out of town a little after 3:00 AM, and started the drive back over the Pass. The clouds were starting to get a little thicker, so the moon was not quite as bright. We decided to pull into one of the parking lots at Stevens Pass Ski Resort to close our eyes for a few minutes....by this time it was a little after 4:00 AM. We thought that we had found an out-of-the-way corner, when very soon a car pulled up with some skiers who had been out partying. They proceeded to take their chains off and motion and yell New Year greetings to us. I guess that Ron and I are just cut from a different cloth.......New Year's Eve is just another night, and I just can't understand people who think that partying and getting drunk is cool.

Ron was still too tired to drive, so I drove for a while and let him take a nap. We switched back when we got to Monroe. We were both starving by then, so we pulled into a Denny's near Arlington for breakfast, around 6:00 AM. We got home around 7:00 AM and both of us crashed.....we slept until 11:00 AM. You would think that we'd learn that we are not as young as we used to be, and therefore can't stay up all night like we used to. (....hmmmm...lesson not learned....we still like the adventure of driving all night to get someplace!)

We still haven't gotten the shot of Leavenworth that we want, but the drive over Stevens Pass was worth it. I just wish that I could have taken a picture of the snow laden trees shimmering in the full moon. Maybe next time............