Here on our little Island in the PNW we have non-holiday school breaks. These are the parent teacher conferences which occur twice per academic year: once in the beginning of the year, and once in the middle (winter) of the year… which means in layman terms: the kids are off school Wednesday-Friday of these weeks, giving us basically a five-day vacation allotment *if* (and this is the key part): the parents are able to time the conference schedule just right.

Luckily, with three little children at our wonderful elementary school, the exemplary teachers work with us to plan a perfectly orchestrated conference schedule. H A L L E L U J A H!

And in the BONUS column: we live in a magical corner of the world in which it’s easy to get to multiple mini vacation spots.

Want to go to the Pacific coast? Be there in 2-3 hours.

The San Juan Islands? 2-3 hours.

Want to go to Canada? 3 hours.

Want to go to the Olympic Mountains? Be there in 2-3 hours.

Want to go skiing? Closest location about 1.5 hours away.

Want to go stay in the Cascades? 2-3 hours away you’ll find some adorable mountain towns and resorts.

Of course grandparents find this a grand time of year to come visit, since these school breaks aren’t actual holidays. Making travel light + easy, and going to a small town + finding a place to stay a relative breeze… even if it is a little last minute!

So, back at the beginning of January, a few weeks before my parents were set to arrive for the conference break in school, we decided it was high time to travel to a new town with them… and have a little winter adventure!

We decided on going to,

drumroll please (but I bet you’ve already guessed):

Leavenworth, Washington!

A few reasons why we chose this quaint Bavarian village set in the Cascade mountains:

It’s an easy trip from the Island, (and even easier for my parents leaving directly from the airport to travel to since the Cascades are the Seattle-side mountains)
We wanted to be in the mountains - the kids REALLY wanted to play in snow
Leavenworth has its own tubing + skiing hills
It’s an adorable town + it’s been on our BUCKET LIST since we moved up here

We hadn’t made the trek to Leavenworth before this trip due to the fact we really wanted to go in winter, but the winter holidays are the busy season. January, however, is perfect: everything is still decorated and holiday cheery, but there are little to no crowds anywhere!

A little Note (If tubing/skiing are on your list of to-dos while visiting):

The tubing and skiing hill are only open Wednesday or Friday in the afternoon, and basically all day on Saturday/Sunday.

When we originally planned our trip we were set to arrive Thursday evening. I initially checked the days for the tubing hill. Everything lined up so I let the information leave my brain. Which we would discover was a bit of a mistake, because we ended up moving the nights forward. So we ended up arriving into town on Wednesday evening, with the entire plan for Thursday to be tubing and skiing/snowboarding. Only to discover (dun dun dun) Thursday morning these plans would not be possible to execute.

With us leaving Friday before noon we were unable to visit the tubing hill at all. So many sad faces at this announcement… but we were determined to sled so we rallied and headed into town…

We had ample time to explore around Leavenworth and it forced us to be a bit more spontaneous. Our first sledding stop we made was to the little hill in town right off the main street.

Asking around though, the locals advised us on an area we could walk to which had the probability of slightly better sledding conditions. (Sounded good!) So off we went on a little walking excursion to Blackbird Island and the nearby ball fields and park; discovering even more (and greater!) opportunities to slide down mountains of snow/ice. The sledding attempts were a bit rough since the area hadn’t received any new snow for a little over a week and had been enjoying a good bit of sunshine. Sledding hill conditions were less snow and more akin to ice hills, making for some fast dangerous sledding runs, but, thankfully, no one was injured! Only losses suffered were two of the three sleds we brought which got ripped to pieces and tossed in the nearby “toboggan” dumpster!

Next Note:

Check weather conditions. If you can be a bit more spontaneous in January, I’d recommend waiting for a forecast of good snow before planning trips. and be sure to check their local website to double check hours for Snow Activities!

And take helmets for sledding.

A friend on the Island who’s actually from Germany gave me her opinion on the town before we visited.

“It’s cute, they try. It’s American homes decorated in Bavarian style.”

And I have to say I agree with her. We were definitely still in America, but in a quaint town where you can go to The Gingerbread Factory and eat Raspberry scones with Raspberry Butter. And German Chocolate Cookies. Bonus- it smells AMAZING in there!

We opted for cooking most meals at home so I don’t have much to offer in recommendations for eating, but we did try out a couple of the bakeries and all of them were pretty delicious. A favorite piece of the town for the kids were the real pretzels the Danish Bakery hung on the trees outside for the birds to feast on. Which, I have to admit, was pretty darn cute.

There aren’t many bakeries and sweet shops… so if you’re there for a few days, I would recommend giving them all a try!

It was a pretty fun, very quick, trip into the mountains. The kids loved their first real play in the snow days!

And, a few days after this trip was over, our little Island got the most snow it’s seen in 100 years! So we’ve definitely gotten our fill of snowflakes this last month, and are definitely ready for spring and the next set of adventures…

stay tuned!