Short Trips: Festive town gears up for a big celebration

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Thursday, October 27, 2005

Short Trips: Festive town gears up for a big celebration

By JEFF LARSEN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER PHOTOGRAPHER

LEAVENWORTH -- What I like most about Leavenworth is its high energy level. Every time I visit, some sort of event is either going on or about to happen in the small Bavarian-theme town just above the Wenatchee Valley east of Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains.


		JEFF LARSEN / P-I
	Tumwater Canyon near Leavenworth radiates fall colors that beckon motorists to pull over along the Wenatchee River to take photographs or a stroll.

In September the town hosted its 42nd annual Autumn Leaf Festival. Earlier this month, revelers drank their way through Oktoberfest. Halloween is just around the corner. And the annual Christmas Lighting Festival in December isn't far off.

Special concerts, bazaars, bake sales and heritage programs run practically non-stop through December. Make your hotel reservations early for the lighting event held over three consecutive weekends, Dec. 3-18. (It's always hoped that the Christmas festivities will be blanketed with snow.) And shopping along Front and Commercial streets downtown goes on all year, of course.

The weekend of Nov. 25-27 the town sports an open-air (i.e. cold) market to fire up the Christmas shopping season. The three-day event will feature local merchandise in decorated booths, a lantern parade and crafts booths. Then Jan. 14-15 Leavenworth cranks up its Ice Fest, complete with a winter play day, snow sculpture, "smooshing" (unique to Leavenworth) and a spectacular fireworks show.

As a capper, the party really begins next year when Leavenworth celebrates its 100th anniversary. Already geared up, the Chamber of Commerce has produced a handsome commemorative historical calendar as well as a striking centennial logo. The colorful, circular logo is a collage of the essence of Leavenworth's history: a train locomotive, Bavarian chateau, ski jumper, mountains, trees and, of course, an apple and a pear, fruits plentiful in the nearby Wenatchee Valley.


		JEFF LARSEN / P-I
	Goats roam the hillside near the 18-hole putting green in Leavenworth.

In 1906 Leavenworth was a railhead for the Great Northern Railroad serving the bustling logging community. Downtown Leavenworth then catered mainly to the workers and roustabouts. The railroad moved its roundhouse to Wenatchee in 1922 and the town's last sawmill closed in 1926. Then the Great Depression hit with a vengeance in 1929.

Leavenworth's future looked gloomy at best. The town existed in survival mode until the 1960s, when dedicated citizens put up their own money as well as their reputations to transform the town from a sleepy former logging burg into a Bavarian-theme town. It was a brave idea.

Today the theme town's success is measured in tourism numbers and dollars rather than board feet. Consider that for a community of slightly fewer than 2,200 people, Leavenworth has 27 hotels and motels totaling 703 rooms; 10 cabin facilities, lodges or resorts; seven bed-and-breakfasts; 45 restaurants; and a handful of wine-tasting rooms. It even sports a Bavarian-themed McDonalds.

I roughed it for a change in one of the recently opened trendy suites that are the latest addition to Leavenworth's Best Western Icicle Inn complex. Pricier than the rooms in the inn proper but geared for longer stays, the new Aspen Suites include fully equipped kitchens, two bedrooms, two baths, two televisions, Wi-Fi and a host of amenities you commonly find in condominiums. The room was comfortable despite the noisy freezer unit in the refrigerator that was so loud I had to turn it off at night.


		JEFF LARSEN / P-I
	Kids enjoy the pumpkin patch at Smallwood's Harvest, a sort of theme-park fruit stand in Peshastin that sells fresh produce, Washington wines, specialty foods and gifts.

Leavenworth has been such a success as a theme town that books have been written and films made about it. This time of year, just minutes west of town via U.S. Route 2, Tumwater Canyon radiates fall colors so vivid they tease motorists to pull off along the Wenatchee River to take photographs. It's particularly interesting to see fall color swaths in the burned-out forest on the opposite side of the Wenatchee River.

The big news in town this fall is the installation of a rope tow on a slope just north of town for inner-tubers during the winter. I always thought half the fun was dragging the inner tube back up the hill after a run. Other winter recreation opportunities in Leavenworth include cross-country skiing and snowmobiling on miles of nearby groomed trails.

Winter recreation buffs -- and merchants as well -- still are jittery from last winter's lack of snowfall that seriously stalled activities and stunted usually solid winter revenues.

Since my annual Wenatchee Valley fruit excursion almost didn't happen this year, I decided to glide over a couple of miles east into Peshastin this trip and check out a couple of sizable fruit stands. The stands seem like part of Leavenworth since they're so close. October is the end of the apple harvest, but if you get over there in the next week or so, tree-ripened fruit can still be had, depending on the weather.


		JEFF LARSEN / P-I
	Don't let the pitchfork scare you -- this wooden farmer is a welcome sight at Prey's Fruit Barn on U.S. Route 2 near Leavenworth. Besides the Stars and Stripes, Prey's flies flags of Germany and Canada.

My first stop was at Smallwood's Harvest, the mother of all fruit stands, which almost looks more like a theme park than a fruit stand. The stand is exactly 2.1 miles east of downtown Leavenworth, according to co-owner Lynn Smallwood. She said her husband, Michael, started selling fruit in 1976 out of the back of a pickup parked near the family orchard at the current location on U.S. Route 2. As business grew, so did the site.

The Smallwoods farm 25 acres today and buy some of the fruit and produce they sell from neighbor farmers. The list of items on the shelves now includes an excellent selection of Washington wines, specialty foods, gifts, produce and fresh fruit when it's in season. The Smallwoods sell tree-ripened apples right out of the bin or by the box.

As they leaned against an apple bin with their extravagant (to say the least) Halloween decorations as a backdrop, Lynn and Michael agreed that one of the reasons for their success is, as Michael put it, "we never do the same thing twice." The locals can verify that.

The couple has transformed a fruit stand into an experience for all ages. Lynn told me she carefully watches her grandchild for clues to what excites children. Then she tries to incorporate the experience into the theme park part of the business.


		JEFF LARSEN / P-I
	Just a couple miles down the road from Leavenworth, you'll find the U-pick pumpkin patch at Smallwood's Harvest in Peshastin.

In recent years, the Smallwoods enlarged the parking area to accommodate large RVs and tour buses. Lynn said that often the tour buses arrive unannounced with maybe 50 to 60 senior citizens on board. Their arrival, she said, can make for a hectic couple of hours.

Lynn said that immediately after the pumpkin decorations come down, "it's on to Christmas."

Closer to Leavenworth and not far from Smallwoods, Prey's Fruit Barn has been an institution on U.S. Route 2 since 1979. Proprietor Siggy Prey sells a mean apple cider, along with jams, honeys, syrups, a variety of pickled items, and, of course, this year's apple and pear crop.

If you buy two boxes of tree-ripened apples at $12.50 each, she will throw in a couple of her prized Japanese-variety, softball-size, Sekai-ichi apples as a bonus. No matter what the enticement, I'm still a Gala and Golden Delicious fan.

The giant pitch-fork-armed, wood-carved farmer out front, and the 30-by-50-foot American flag flying from a 100-foot high flagpole signal to motorists that Prey's Fruit Barn is just ahead. It's pretty hard to miss.

Since 1955, a sign of the seasonal change in Peshastin has been when Helen Hauff calls her last customer "honey" -- at some point during the last week in October --and rolls up her tiny fruit stand for the season across from the intersection of U.S. routes 2 and 97.

When the quick-witted, feisty, 76-year-old darling of the apple orchards sells her last apple, rest assured there aren't any left on the trees. Next May, when she unfolds her camping chair in its familiar spot next to the apple and pear bins, her 11-hour days begin again and the fruit-selling season starts.

Until then, the tourists will just truck on by to Leavenworth.