The taxi picked us up at 8.45am for the 45min drive to the airport in Wenatchee. It wasn't long after we left the snowy surrounds of Leavenworth that we came across orchards full of trees with no leaves. The driver said they were pear trees & Leavenworth was a big pear area. That makes sense as Saint Nicholas was giving the kids gold wrapped pears on Friday night & we tasted the local pears in the street on Saturday. They tasted different to our pears. Cl...

We were picked up just after 10am by the driver from the Icicle Ranch. It was only about a 15min drive to the sleigh ride area. I thought we would go up into the mountains but we didn't. There were a range of sleighs there from small to large. We had chosen to pay extra for a private sleigh ride assuming we would get the small ones that really look like a sleigh. But, it wasn't to be. The scenery was beautiful. There were mountains all around and snow covered fie...

We started the day with an Austrian style breakfast of breads, meats, cheeses, eggs & coffeecake. Our hosts were very pleasant & came around to talk to each table. As they did, we were asked if we would like eggs and if we would like them soft, medium or hard boiled. When the eggs arrived at the tables, they were all wearing Santa hats. Very cute! After breakfast we booked our sleigh ride for tomorrow and the airport shuttle for Monday. Then we headed ou...

We got to the Amtrak bus station in plenty of time to catch our 8.50am bus but it was running about half an hour late. We finally got going but there was heavy traffic getting out of Seattle. We headed out the same way we had gone to the Boeing factory and snow capped mountains were clearly visible. It wasn't long before we started going up and snow started appearing on the ground outside. The further we went up the more snow started to appear and eventually we s...

Today was our only full day in Seattle so we tried to fit in as much as possible. We started with a tour of the Boeing Assembly Plant. The Boeing Company occupy a huge amount of land about 35mins out of Seattle. On the way out, our bus driver told us the story of Bill Boeing. He started an engineering degree at Yale before leaving in his final year to try and make his fortune in the logging industry. He was very successful at that before his interest in aviation ...