July 22, 2024, Day 15 of trip.
After we escaped the forest fire, we headed to Leavenworth, Washington, which is an amazing Bavarian town. We traveled about 170 miles which took us just over 3 hours of driving. Dexter and I listened to the audiobook of Hatchet, by Gary Paulson during our drive. When we arrived at the Leavenworth KOA, it was terribly hot. We knew that we might experience warm weather on our trip, but the average high temperature in Leavenworth in the 3rd week of July is about 82 degrees so we didn’t think it’d be too bad. When we pulled in to our site yesterday, the outside air temperature was 104 degrees! It took me about 40 minutes to unhook the truck, set up the stabilizers, extend the slide, hook up the water, sewer & electrical and position the exterior mat. By the time I went inside, I was miserably hot. The RV air conditioner can only produce about at 20 degree temperature differential and by the time I made it inside, it was a balmy 88 degrees. Normally 88 feels quite hot indoors, but this was so much cooler than outside it felt refreshing.
Dexter crawled into bed with Heidi last night after she had already laid down and said “Mom, please don’t be mad at me.” It never is a good thing when your offspring starts a conversation with “Don’t be mad at me.” Dexter and Annalise are both undergoing Invisalign orthodontic treatment and Dexter had accidently broken off one of the metal buttons for his rubber bands that he is supposed to wear at night. He showed the problem to Heidi to look for a solution. Under ordinary circumstances, this is no big deal as you just make an appointment with your orthodontist, have an in-person visit, and get a new metal button attached. Easy-peasy. When you are hundreds of miles away from your orthodontist, it gets more complicated.
Heidi called Dexter’s orthodontist first thing this morning and explained the situation to the receptionist. A few hours later, the receptionist called back with a plan: we are going to stop by a different orthodontist’s office tomorrow in Spokane on our way to Athol, ID to get this taken care of. I would definitely not recommended traveling for a year while your kids are undergoing ortho treatment if you can avoid it. But luckily so far so good. Kind of.
The main reason we wanted to visit Leavenworth was to visit the Leavenworth Reindeer Farm. Heidi and I (without the kids) visited Leavenworth 3 years ago a part of our 20th wedding anniversary trip and we toured Reindeer Farm at that point and vowed to return with Dexter and Annalise.
When we arrived, we sanitized our feet and then admired the ponies, bunnies and turkeys and then fed the chickens. We browsed the gift shop for a few minutes before it was time for our pre-feeding briefing. We marched back to a covered area and watched a video teaching us all about reindeer. They can swim faster than the fastest human, run faster than the fastest human, and live comfortably at temperatures as low as -100 Fahrenheit. After the intro video, the staff member gave us a quick safety briefing and then it was time to feed the reindeer.
They gave each of us a single willow branch, as willow leaves are a reindeer favorite, and we headed into the pen. I held my branch out of reach at first while the reindeer fed on others branches and soon I had my own crowd of reindeer when the other peoples’ leaves had been eaten. Going to the first feeding of the day is a good strategy as the reindeer are the hungriest. They have 41 reindeer in the herd this year, 11 of them which were born a couple of months ago. The “baby” reindeer are surprisingly large as they grow about a pound a day. Their antlers can grow up to an inch a day, and an adult can have antlers that weigh up to 35 lbs. We were the last people to depart the reindeer pen as we enjoyed talking to the lady who owns the reindeer farm.
My Aunt Julie (my mom’s sister, which is not the same person as my sister Julie) lives in Ellensburg, WA which isn’t too far away from Leavenworth so I arranged to have Aunt Julie and Uncle Chuck join us for dinner. Our original plan was to eat vegetarian Bratwurst, but the tables were all outside and it was still too hot so we opted for Los Camperos Mexican food instead. My Aunt Julie has been studying our family history and can trace us all the way back to the Mayflower. Thus far, she has 24,591 relatives in our family tree on her side of the family. A few notable people who are relatives of mine (in descending order of common ancestry):
Cousins:
President John Adams (3rd cousin 8x removed)
President Abraham Lincoln (5th cousin 5x removed)
Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie) (8th cousin, 4x removed)
President Thomas Jefferson (11th cousin, 7x removed)
President George Washington (11th cousin 7x removed)
President Barack Obama (12th cousin 1x removed)
Meriweather Lewis (Lewis and Clark Expedition) (12th cousin 6x removed)
President Theodore Roosevelt (14th cousin 4x removed)
Grandparents:
John Thomas Clarke (Mayflower Pilot) (10th Great-grandfather)
Emperor Charlemagne (37th Great-grandfather)
I think it is pretty cool that I can trace my genealogy back to every single president on Mt. Rushmore. I’m hoping that this information will help Annalise and Dexter enjoy learning more about history. (Another fun fact, there are 82 other people named “Timothy” in my family tree).
This afternoon, I got a call from the State Farm Insurance adjuster wanting to know the details of my injured truck. I explained that it was a single vehicle accident involving my truck and my trailer and that my truck was the only thing that needs repair. She noted that a single vehicle accident is by definition an “at fault” accident and told me I could pick any repair shop I desire, but if I pick a shop that isn’t on their preferred list, it would delay the repair and also lead to me having to pay any extra cost if the repair was more expensive than State Farm thought it should be. She sent me a list of preferred shops, and I will have to get this sorted out. My plan is to deliver the truck to the shop in November during the block where we are back in Oregon around Thanksgiving. That means that for the next 4 months, we will be driving around with a patched up tail light and damaged fender.
Tomorrow, we drive 220 miles to the Silverwood RV Park in Athol, Idaho in anticipation of visiting Silverwood Theme Park for the following two days. They have an amusement park as well as a water slides and we plan on taking full advantage of all of the amenities. Silverwood is probably #1 on Dexter’s list of “Favorite Places in the Universe” and he is thrilled to be visiting Silverwood.
So far, this trip has been very high intensity, but we’ve seen all sorts of great things and are generally enjoying ourselves. I’m sure that we will dial back the intensity as things progress, but there is so much country to see and we only have 400 days to do it. (Unless, of course, we decide to keep traveling after our 400 days is complete).
SAOTD: Tim, for setting up the RV in 104 degree weather.