Wanderer Photography

Hello, World!

After a couple of days in which I enjoyed the privileges of having my parents around – read: dinner prepared, waiting for me, everyday after coming from work, breakfast prepared in the morning, we decided to head out on one week-end around Washington state.

First stop: Snoqualmie Falls. Even though it was end of June – beginning of July, the weather managed to upset us a bit – it rained for a couple of days in a row. Nothing unexpected, but the weather was pretty bad for a day trip. Nevertheless, a day trip where you can see stuff is a lot better than staying at home.

Snoqualmie Falls is located in the city of Snoqualmie, about 30 minutes by car from Bellevue via I-90. The falls is spectacular, with a height of 80 meters. But, the more interesting thing about this falls (at least from an engineering perspective), can not be seen in the pictures: at the base of the falls is the first completely underground power plant. This power plant, built in 1898, is dug into the ground at 82 meters (the height of the falls) and has been featured in the Twin Peaks TV series. The power plant is still operational (it was actually extended and there are 2 power plants now) and they are “responsible” for the low debit of water that actually reaches the falls (even on rainy days).

Another touristic attraction for the city of Snoqualmie is the Northwest Railway Museum which has a train that runs on the route: Snoqualmie – North Bend – Snoqualmie – Snoqualmie Falls – Snoqualmie (the start point – Snoqualmie – is half-way between Snoqualmie Falls and North Bend). The train trip was very … bumpy, let’s say. It was slow and bumpy up to the point that I was actually wondering if this train passed the space-time continuum and came straight from my childhood in Romania when it took 3-4 hours for a 60km trip from home (Bucharest) to my grandparent’s city (Oltenita). But enough with complaining – the carriages were very old and tried to reproduce as much as possible the atmosphere of using them. For example, the one below was from a train from the beginning of the 20th century and at the very end of the carriage, there was a barber seat. Honestly, if the quality of the tracks was the same then as it is now, you really really REALLY had to trust your barber to shave off only hair and not skin. The train offers an interesting view of Snoqualmie Falls (from the top), as well as a view of the Snoqualmie river.

Even though it was not the brightest of days, I decided to continue the journey with my parents to the city of Leavenworth. Leavenworth is a very small city (2000 inhabitants) in Washington state on the Wenatchee river and it has one special characteristic: the entire city is modeled to look like a Bavarian city. After living in Germany for 5 years, this feels a bit like going back in time. Herzlich Wilkommen, indeed!

They even have a nutcracker museum (not that big, but the old lady will tell you about her and her husband and how they came to the US).
It’s a nice city where you can have some real German Wurst and some good German beer. There isn’t a lot of stuff to do around here, but to just sit back, relax, have some good food and beer.

The road back was on a Sunday evening on US-2. Unfortunately, there was a 30 km traffic jam since everybody was going home to Seattle, but at least we got to experience the size of a traffic jam in the US.

Over and out,

/cd