Leavenworth

We spent a day traveling to Leavenworth so Ethan could spend time with Caitlin. He has been working so hard to catch up and we thought it would be a nice reward and a fun drive with the family. Megan came along and we ended up dropping Ethan off in Redmond so he could ride up with Caitlin. Her church had planned to go to Leavenworth for dinner and a browse around town. Because of the length of the drive we chose to go earlier and then look and shop around town. It took forever to get there but we did stop and geocache on the way. One of my favorite geocaches was the one at The Reptile Zoo! Thanks to Charlie's quick searching we were back in the car in no time. We ended up stopping for gas prior to the climb up the mountain--I had 63 miles of gas left. The only gas station around was out of gas and it was 35 miles back to Gold Bar or 40 miles to Leavenworth (that's what we were told). I chose to drive forward because it was close to the same distance. We made it to the top of the climb with 5 miles of gas left and 20 miles to go before town. We coasted in Neutral downward towards the town but hit 0 gas on the cars monitor 15 miles out of town near a rest stop. I was going to continue to coast into the rest stop and ask for help (phone service was out in the mountains) but Mark suggested we just keep going. We did, and thank goodness we did because we went through a town with a busy gas station (I swear it felt like it shouldve a rainbow over the top of it...Gods promise to keep us safe) on the side of the road. We would have never made it to town and if we had stopped we would have been stuck and had to walk for gas without a cell phone--horror movies are made this way!!! We fueled up and headed toward town but our first stop was a huge Candy store on the side of the road by the Dam. Everyone, especially Charlie, was in heaven! Val bought some quail pickled eggs, Mark got ginger candy, hot sauce, and fake cigarettes, Charlie chose a stuffed dog and  tons of taffy. 

The day was good because we never once overreacted about the gas situation. Sure inside we were both upset but we remained calm and underreacted. Maybe it's that one video that helped...the secret to a long marriage...underreacting! We had a wonderful meal together with the girls and then beer and brats at the place I've always wanted to try.