Ah, Leavenworth!
I was stationed at Fort Lewis, outside of Tacoma, from 1989 to 1991. My previous duty station to that had been in Ansbach, Germany (about 25 miles West of Nuremburg in Northern Bavaria.)
When I was stationed in Germany we frequently went down to the resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen on the Austrian border to ski. I remember thinking how beautiful the town was with the open-framed, stucco buildings with colorful murals painted on them and the snow-covered alps in the background.
So imagine my surprise when, in 1989, I was just tooling around the back country of Washington state in my little Mazda pickup, and I turned the corner and saw a little town that looked like it had been airlifted straight from Bavaria! It even had the same kind of murals on the stucco buildings, with the snow-covered Cascades as a nice substitute for the Alps!
Walking through the town I was tempted to say "Gruss Gott!" to the other folks there, or wander into the Gasthaus for a Kristallerweizen and a Weisswurst!
Haven't been back to the Cascades since 1991 but I am bound and determined to get back there someday and Leavenworth is high on my list of destinations. Thanks for the pictures.
Were you anywhere near Chelan Lake?