"April in February!"

That was a headline in today's paper. The skies were blue, the temperatures mild, and signs of spring were everywhere you looked. We couldn't resist the temptation to hop in the car and decided to take the Cascade Loop over Stevens Pass to Leavenworth and then go home over Blewett Pass which is a tad higher than Stevens.

As you can see, Leavenworth is a town with a Bavarian theme. All the buildings reflect this and the signs are all in German. Usually there are lots of tourists, and today was no exception,but we finally found a parking place and had a nice lunch at Sandy's Waffle House before continuing our journey.

Before you start up to the pass, if you watch carefully, you can turn off on a snippet of the Old Cascade Highway and view a very long tunnel.
If you take the train from Seattle to Chicago like we did in 1979, you will go through the tunnel.

Just seeing it and the sloping train bed with Highway 2 in the distance makes me think of my Grandpa Curtis who worked "out West" on the railroads in this area as a young man. What hard work that must have been!

We saw lots of folks skiing at both passes. It was a perfect day to be on the slopes or in the car. I got a lot of knitting done too! And that reminds me, I finally found the button for this hat that I finished last week. It's from a pattern I first saw on Dee's blog and also on Ravelry, but I "shrunk" it down to toddler size.

The last thing I want to show is the pretty Valentine's surprise I received from Pat Winter. She is so clever, and even the way she packages her gifts is always extraordinary. This time she made a tiny pocket from what looks like an old pattern of some sort. Isn't that little heart cute? Thank you, Pat, for thinking of me.