After Marble Creek came a much-anticipated stay at a Thousand Trails campsite in Leavenworth. With our Thousand Trails membership, we can stay for up to 2 weeks at any site, but then need to take 1 week off before we go to another. So we booked this site for the full 2 weeks starting 7 days after we left Cultus Lake.
I was really looking forward to seeing this area. We have always liked the Okanagan strip of BC because of the constant sun; it seems like all of the rain leaves the air as it pushes over the mountains to leave continual blue skies on the other side. From my hours of exploring through google maps, it appeared that this drier valley continues and gets wider as you head south. So we had dreams of a giant Okanagan in Washington and Oregon.
The climb over the mountains was steep and unrelenting. Just before the summit, there was about 20 miles straight of 6% grade with no breaks to give the truck a rest. And here was where we learned the “weakest link” of the truck. The transmission had gotten warm on the Coquihalla, so it wasn’t a surprise to see the temperatures climbing. But even after I reduced my speed a couple times, the temps just kept climbing. The needle touched the bottom of the “red line” area and the truck gave us a warning message, so we decided to pull over and allow things to cool off for a bit. I didn’t like the idea of hot fluid sitting still and baking, so as soon as the temps dropped about 10 degrees we started moving and just crawled up the hill slowly in first gear going about 30 km/h with our hazard lights flashing.
We made it over the summit and everything started to feel a lot easier. We noticed the trees starting to change to the familiar lodgepole pines we are used to seeing in central BC; a similar sparse forest with little underbrush. I could see dirt biking trails weaving all through the trees which made me that much more certain I would enjoy our time here. The stress was behind us and now it was time to get excited about our destination. The campsite was actually about 30 minutes outside Leavenworth in a town called Plain (which started to feel like a joke, with all of the buildings labelled “Plain Church”, “Plain Grocery”, etc.), so it was not too far down the hill before we arrived.
We got to the site and it was huge. 279 sites in total split over two main areas. After a bit of driving around the loops, we found an awesome spot with only a giant rock as our main neighbour. Knowing we would be there for a while, we weren’t too afraid of unpacking and making ourselves at home.
The campground itself had tons to offer. The kids’ favourite part was the pool, which we went to almost every day. By the end of the trip, Niko had learned to swim alone (with his lifejacket on), and both boys were running and jumping into the pool, neither afraid to go under water as they did (though it took us a while to get comfortable with it). There was also several biking trails, including one that lead up a mountain to a great lookout. They had frisbee golf, mini golf, ping pong, and a bunch of other things we didn’t even get around to.
We also had visitors! Our great friends Todd and Jesse drove over to see us with their truck and camper for a night. The kids enjoyed having visitors, we played some games, and the next day we all had a beach day at a nearby lake!
I even got out a couple times to really test out the new Surron. All of those trails I saw winding through the forest on our drive in turned out to be exactly what I hoped they were. A ton of dirt bike and quad trails, mixed in with the odd dirt road. The bike performed great as well; enough power to make it fun and get up whatever hills you come across, and once you transition to more of a mountain bike riding style it is so light that you end up bunny-hopping over every little rock/root/bump along the way.
Now… This post is called “Leavenworth”… There is a little town just south of where we were staying called Leavenworth. The whole town is German themed (every new building must be built with a similar aesthetic). We went into town a few times and there was lots to walk around and do, lots of cool shops and great-smelling restaurants. We visited a weekend market in the main square, and had lunch… this amazing “meatball pretzel” which all 4 of us shared! Along with a flight of in-house ciders, this stop blew our expectations out of the water. I think we would all be quite happy to come back to Leavenworth if we were ever passing through the area again!
