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| Downtown Leavenworth "Bavarian Feel" |
Leavenworth is a Bavarian-themed village in Washington's Cascade Mountains known for its German-style architecture, cuisine, and festivals. Originally a logging town, it was transformed in the 1960s to attract tourism, and today it's a popular destination for its unique atmosphere and outdoor activities, with events like Oktoberfest and the Christmas Lighting Festival drawing large crowds. They are so serious about maintaining the vibe, they have established strict building restrictions based on their Bavarian-themed building code. All new construction, remodeling, and signage projects must conform to this aesthetic, which is managed by a design review board. Even McDonald's had to comply.
Once we arrived and set up our site, we headed into town to take in the views. First stop, of course, a brewery, where we had a couple of lagers and a snack. As the sun started setting, you could see the effect of the forest fires in the area. In fact, there were two larger fires that started from lightning strikes when we first arrived in the state, so these fires had been burning for over a week.
The next day we set out for a hike, and after finding out that the trail we had planned was over seven miles of pretty rough climbing one-way, we were advised on another option, just a few miles down the road. The ranger did inform us that it was on an unpaved road that could be a little rough. Oh my, that was an understatement. The three-mile road took over 20 minutes. The suspension in a Chevy 3500 is not exactly forgiving.Once we found a place to park, it ended up being a nice hike up to 8-mile Lake. It's not really 8-miles long, so not sure where the name came from. While we were there, we saw a helicopter approaching, and it was heading right to the lake, where we found they were scooping up water to take to assist with firefighting efforts in the area. The process was pretty cool to see, but the reason for the activity was not.
The next day we packed up our 5th wheel, heading out for what was supposed to be four days of driving, retracing our route back through Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota. Shortly after crossing the Columbia River and just as we were cutting over to access I-90, the transmission blew. As in, anything over about 23 MPH the engine would just rev way up - it was not able to shift into third. I could go into how disappointing our GoodSam Roadside Assistance (or lack thereof) was, but here's the gist of it.
This happened on a Saturday morning in Quincy, WA. There were no repair shops open in Quincy. However, there was one open just down the road, in George, WA, which Tim found. After waiting over two hours to hear back from GoodSam on a tow, they said it was going to be over $2200 to tow us 10 miles. Oh, but because we had GoodSam, it would only be $700 out of pocket. We were stunned, and so frustrated, we agreed to take things into our own hands, and crept along backroads to George, thank goodness for paved side roads! We called ahead to the hotel to ensure we could unhook and leave the RV there, as there were no RV parks in the area. OK, there was one, but we left as soon as we pulled in as it was one of the sketchiest we've ever seen. And we've seen a few.
After unhooking the RV and driving the truck another quarter mile to the repair shop, the mechanic basically said he would not try to 'fix', that he would prefer to 'replace', and that it could take 1-2 weeks to get a transmission. Since the transmission was under warranty, we agreed the work should be done at a Chevy dealership. We had to wait until Monday to call a Chevy dealership 30 miles away, get it towed, and then Tim rented a car to get back to the hotel. Meanwhile, we've had two days of thinking about our options to get us back to MN. Buy another truck and have a 5th wheel hitch installed? Sell everything? After going back and forth, we made the decision to sell everything right there in central WA. We still owed quite a bit on the trailer (DO NOT EVER BUY A NEW TRAILER), but we had equity in the truck, and they made a decent offer. We thought we had another 6 months of RV travel, but this just seemed like the right decision, given the situation.
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| Hanging with George in George, WA |
Once we made the conclusion we were selling both, we had to clear out basically a small household out of the RV, making some serious cuts as to what was going to return home with us in our rental car, a Hyundai Tucson (largest car they had!). Not sure why we had five pillows and six towels, but hey, it was our home away from home for three years. The RV was picked up the next day by Camping World (the dealership was over 1.5 hrs away, and he was OK with completing the paperwork via FedEx), and we returned to the Chevy dealership to empty out the truck and sign the paperwork.
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| Our truck and RV going bye-bye |
We feel extremely lucky this happened where it did, as there are plenty of areas along this route where we would have been in danger even on the side of the road. Plenty of places along this route without any cell coverage. The people we met who helped with both the truck and the RV, and even the guys who served us a taco at a food truck, were extremely friendly.
Now that we've said goodbye to our truck and RV, we're not sure if we will ever get another RV, and we're not even sure what kind of second vehicle we might get. What we do know is that we love travel, and we'll just move on and enjoy what life brings us!
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