As a travel writer, I’ve had more than my share of lonely trips. Trips alone mean unshared yet incredible experiences, times I’ve wished fervently I could turn to someone and say, ‘wasn’t that amazing?’

As my children grow up, I’ve learned that traveling in their company can be exhilarating. Together we get that precious one-on-one time, and they get to meet new people and have experiences they’d otherwise not have. I try to take them one at a time to reduce the headache of intervening in fights and arguments. Selfishly, I want each child all to myself, without having to share him or her with siblings. Luckily, they want mom to themselves, as well.

There’s a lineup when it comes to traveling with my children, and it has a serious sequence that no-one in the family is allowed to forget. As one child’s turn comes up, the others ponder the fairness of the matter. Will her trip be a better one than mine was? they ask. Who will get more nights away with mom, they wonder. Who will sleep in a nicer hotel and do more fun things? If there’s anything unfair about the comparison, they voice their objections loudly.

When it was my eight-year-old daughter’s turn to pack her bags, her excitement knew no bounds. She organized her clothes months before our departure date, researched the hotels online and familiarized herself with the itinerary. It was going to be a spectacular few days in snow country and she was ready for it, with a brand new pair of snow pants and gloves bought specially for the trip. She patiently counted down the days until we left, informing each of her teachers at school where she was going and why. “It’s my turn to travel with my mom,” she said proudly.

For her sake as much as mine, I wanted the trip to be spectacular. Which is why I was so devastated when I fell on our first day and injured my back. Had I been alone it wouldn’t have been so bad. But to have my daughter witness my pain and discomfort made the situation feel much worse. She’d been counting on this time with her mom, and instead, she was stuck with a semi-invalid who had to pop a lot of pills – none of which made much difference.

I ploughed through the three days after my fall, silently begging the Advil for more relief and climbing gratefully into bed at night, proud that I’d made it through the schedule without tears. My daughter looked on anxiously, unfooled by my efforts to pretend I was okay. “How’s your back, mom?” became her constant refrain, a vain hope it would mend quickly and we could get on with the fun together.
Back pain is my nemesis twice a year and when it arrives, it does so excruciatingly and suddenly. Its onset means two weeks of pill-popping pain, visits to the chiro and massage therapist and a horribly skew posture. I spend a lot of time in bed – when I’m not on an assignment in snow country, that is.

As guilty as I felt that I’d inadvertently ruined her trip, my daughter rose gracefully to the occasion. She agreed to go horseback riding through the hills while I watched from the lodge, in too much discomfort to even consider mounting a horse. She packed our clothes up when I couldn’t bend to reach them, helped me with my socks and shoes when they, too, were out of reach and watched over me with anxious eyes, doing all she could to help.

I tell my kids that each trip has some good and some bad, and that you have to take the good with the bad. There will inevitably be delays, mislaid items and plans that don’t turn out the way you thought they would. It’s all part of the experience of traveling, and no amount of organizing ahead of time can predict precisely what will happen when you’re in the moment. In the wake of our snow country trip, I get to add ‘invalid mother’ to the list of things that can possibly go wrong.

Taking the kids gives them a chance to grow, though I never know exactly where that growth will be. In my daughter’s case, I got a glimpse of her maternal instinct and of the caring, watchful mother she will be someday. I’m just hoping she didn’t leave scarred with the impression of the ailing mother she will one day have to care for.

Boxing Day will always be a special day in my life, since it’s the day my husband and I tied the knot 15 years ago. Usually we exchange cards and head out for a nice meal at one of our favorite restaurants. This past Boxing Day was a little different, though. Purely by chance, we were invited to spend it at a Secret Garden in Worcester, a small town located a 90-minute drive from Cape Town, South Africa.

The beautifully landscaped garden is part of a farm owned by Jason and Rachel Drew. Located literally on the slopes of a rugged mountain, it is filled with large trees, a tumbling stream, outdoor art and an exquisite flower garden. Surrounded by a stone wall (that does nothing to keep the baboons out, on quieter days) and steps away from a dam, it’s an ideal place for a party.

The Drews invited us to join them for an afternoon event they called “Classics in the Garden.” We were welcomed by the classical music of a Hungarian Trio, treated to garlic pizza straight from a stone oven and serenaded by the Gugulewthu Tenors as children cavorted on an inflatable waterslide. Despite the 30-something degree Celsius weather, my skin broke out in gooseflesh as the tenors’ powerful voices sang the South African anthem, something I hadn’t heard in close to 20 years. There was a special energy in the air that day, a feeling of fulfillment, contentment and pure awe at the beauty that surrounded us in the Worcester countryside. I confess, the urge to return to South Africa permanently was particularly strong that day.

It was an extraordinary party, and perhaps not surprisingly, its hosts are extraordinary individuals, too. Walking to the dam for some relief from the excruciating heat, I had a chance to chat with Jason Drew and find out about his work. Passionate about sustainability, he has co-authored a book called The Protein Crunch, in which he discusses resource depletion and environmental destruction of our food sources. Once at the helm of an international call center, he’s given it up to focus entirely on sustainable business. These days his attention is divided between two companies with incredibly unique products: the larvae of farmed flies, and farming of genetically modified mosquitos.

A few days later, I interviewed him about the fly farming, which operates under the company AgriProtein. He and his brother David founded the company in the village of Tulbach, South Africa, in 2009 with the goal of reducing and eventually eliminating the use of fishmeal in industrial farming, by replacing it with fly larvae. Using the common house fly and feeding it on waste nutrients that local abattoirs paid them to remove, the Drews set up a fly farming test facility. “We needed to cram the industrialization of fly farming into a few short years and we nearly gave up several times,” says Jason.

There were lots of challenges along the way – like figuring out how to provide water for the flies without drowning them, and getting flies to lay their eggs in one place and at the same time. Fortunately, the growth rate of a fly is explosive, with each one multiplying to over 1,000 in a few weeks. To date, the company has managed to produce sufficient larvae to produce the protein content for a balanced diet of whatever species they want to feed. Turns out magmeal is more nutritious than marine fishmeal, and since the world is fast running out of fishmeal (which escalated in price from $616 per metric ton in 2001 to $1,402 in 2011), it may come in handy. Next up is the construction of an industrial plant that can manufacture the large quantities of magmeal required by the farming industry. The team is looking for investors in South Africa, German and Saudi Arabia.

I know less about Drew’s second company, the UK-based Oxitec. In a nutshell, it uses modern biotechnology to develop insect strains that are sterile and can be used to control pests, such as the aedes mosquitoes that transmit dengue fever. “We’ve developed a genetically modified mosquito,” Jason explained. “When it mates and has offspring, any female offspring will die right away.”

That’s important because it’s the female mosquitoes that bite, and in so doing, transmit dengue fever in some parts of the world. Oxitec is now starting work on the anopheles mosquitoes, responsible for spreading malaria.

I left the Secret Garden feeling awed and inspired – by the garden itself, which is an ode to beauty, by the surrounding peace and tranquility of the Worcester mountains and by the energy, dedication and pure initiative of David Drew, a man determined to make a difference in the world. It was an unforgettable Boxing Day, that’s for sure.

My friend Rena’s parents never seem to age. In their late 60s, they look like the happy, gracefully grey-haired couple from a life insurance advertisement. Both healthy and as active and capable as ever, they glow with pride at the achievements of their children and grandchildren. They work, travel, lead active social lives and deliver kind words of praise and admiration to their daughter and her friends, never causing embarrassment or inconvenience. I think of them as the Golden Couple and find myself wishing fervently that my husband and I will land in our 60s with as healthy a glow. By which I mean as little deterioration.

Around us, other role models in a similar age demographic aren’t as encouraging. Losing a spouse will do that to you, I suspect, particularly if the loss followed a long, soul-destroying illness. No matter how successful your children are, or how adorable the grandkids, life looks a lot different after a loss of that magnitude. Bury the love of your life and it’s easy to give in to cynicism, to relinquish hopes for future happiness and to hole yourself up in a tangle of loneliness, sadness, anger and frustration, a circle of negativity that can be difficult to escape.

For others, it’s the body that fails and the mind that remains strong. My cousin Chaim has been in and out of hospital the past few years, the condition of his 70-something body gradually creaking under the strain of age. Gone are his days of gallivanting across the globe. These days, his time is spent examining the changing light as sunshine sweeps his room, and delving deep into memory back to a time when he was young, active and bursting with energy. He writes poetic emails about his longing to see friends and family instead of being confined and restricted by a doggedly uncooperative body. His desire is so strong and so tinged with sadness, it’s almost tangible.

I know beauty and grace can be found in the process of aging, – but not easily. Every now and then the grim reality of what it means to age punches me hard in the stomach. It reminds me that despite golden highlights carefully placed to hide my grey hair, and despite compliments from others about a still youthful appearance, I’m walking the same treadmill to old age, too.

One recent punch that stands out prominently was a back injury that left my posture hopelessly skew and my body aching so badly I begged for codeine to stifle the pain. Those 14 days of backache felt like 14 years, and as the minutes ticked by I kept wondering ‘what if.’ What if the skew posture was my new, permanent reality? What if the pain never subsided and codeine tablets were my only relief? Two weeks later all had healed and my embarrassing skewness had corrected itself. But for a short time, old age felt remarkably close and incredibly unwelcome.

As the years pass, the Golden Couple are my inspiration, their health and energy a reminder that gradual deterioration is not inevitable and that there are some, among us, who will outwit its clasp. With any luck, I’ll be one of them.

Every time I return to Cape Town, I fantasize about leaving my North American home and moving back. The city where I spent my first 20 years tugs magnetically at my heart, seducing me with its beauty and tempting me to immerse myself in this milieu of culture, memory and history to which I feel so strongly connected.
I delight in the smallest of details: the heavy guttural accents I hear in the streets, the sight of the grapetizer juice I loved as a child, the thrill I get from driving through the suburbs where I once had piano lessons, play dates and bike rides. I know these streets with the warmth and affection of an old friend, and each time I return they feel like a long lost home, welcoming me with their familiarity.
We play a game, my husband and I. What if we’d never left, we ask ourselves. Where would we be today, had we stayed in Cape Town, and what would our lives be like? What could make us toss our lives abroad and return to these sunny African shores?
The first week we’re back, we question why we live in North America at all. How could we have relinquished all this beauty, we wonder. We wade through the warm ocean waters, feeling the texture of silky soft sand beneath our feet. We sleep in the shadow of the mountain, traversing its contours to reach the city, the beach and the craft markets. We luxuriate in the intense heat of an African summer, its blissfully warm evenings and gloriously hot days, the swimming pool an oft-used and refreshing reprieve. We just can’t get enough.
The second week, though, the glow begins to fade a little. We notice the trellis gates and burglar bars that imprison residents in their own homes, clearly reflecting their fear of burglary and break-ins. In the local newspaper, The Cape Times, an article today discussed gangs and their operations in the very suburbs where we were sleeping at night. “The gangs are using the mountain greenbelts to get to the homes they want to break into,” the article stated. “Teams of burglars are watching houses and deliberately breaking in when residents are home, because that way, they can avoid having to deal with security systems.”
The fantasy of a life back in Cape Town is tainted by the image of trellis gates, of hiding the candlesticks when we leave town for a night and of living with the fear that someone might just target our house on a night just like this one. What would they do to us if they gained entry? Is this a fear we’d want to live with?
By the third week, the seduction is over and we’re ready to go home. We’ve collected our souvenirs – those paintings, wood carvings and African embroidered prints that most locals wouldn’t be caught dead displaying in their homes. For us these are physical memories of a place we long for but one we have left in hopes of a better, safer life. We take them home and find places for them in North America, where they remind us of where we come from and of some of the beauty we have left behind. With healthy tans and skin glowing from the sun, we board a plane for the continent that has become our adopted home with a mixture of sadness and excitement.
See, we know all too well what we’ve left behind – its exquisite beauty, but its treachery too. We’ve chosen this path with our eyes wide open and with dreams of a more secure future. But the choice is always tinged with a slight whiff of remorse, a wish that if things could only be different, we might have stayed and made Cape Town our forever home.

Know your limit – play within it. It’s the cautionary phrase used by the casinos, and one I wish I’d remembered on my recent ski biking lesson in Steamboat Springs.

It had taken me a good hour to get the hang of ski biking on the ‘magic carpet slope’ at Mount Werner, but after that I was careening down the bunny slope in graceful S-curves, amazed at my own progress. Understand this: for 20 years
I’ve been too terrified to ski, yet deeply envious of others and their ability to traverse the slopes so effortlessly. With the ski bike, I was told, the mountain could be mine, too.

With initial trepidation I donned the ski-like footwear required of ski biking and tried my first slow curve down the smallest slope in the bunny hill. A keen road biker, I’d assumed the two would be similar. In truth, both have a saddle
and handlebars, but their common features stop there. Instead of wheels, the ski bike has skis. Its rider wears a shortened version of skis and uses body posture to maneuver the bike.

Others on the bunny hill looked on enviously. “That looks like fun,” one guy told me as he struggled to right himself on a snowboard. “It is,” I admitted. I was having a good time. With a quick magic carpet ride to its uppermost boundary, the
slope was just the right size for me, wide enough to give me a half dozen graceful curves before I reached the bottom, large enough to feel the exhilaration of using my body and gravity to control the bike’s movement. It didn’t take long, though, before I had a false sense of my own prowess.

My instructor, Josh, was impressed. “We could end the lesson now, or we could have one ride down the bigger hill up there,” he said, gesturing to a slope whose peak I couldn’t see. Skiers and snowboarders careened down it at a hurtling
pace and my gut instinct was an immediate no. “I think I’m comfortable right here,” I said slowly.

But he’d planted a seed in my mind. I’d never navigated a slope that big. He said I could do it easily. Perhaps I should give it a try, my inner voice urged. Stupidly, I agreed to board the chair lift, clutching the ski bike anxiously as
I held it suspended over the side. I wasn’t prepared for the speed and height of the chair lift or how nervous I’d feel about holding the bike over the edge. What if I dropped it? And how was I going to get off this lift, whose motion never ceased? My old anxieties about skiing flooded back inside me and Josh
sensed my growing apprehension. “You’re going to get right back on that bike as soon as you come off the chair lift,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine.”

Hah. As I tried to clamber off, my feet slipped out from under me and I landed in the snow, a tangled mess of snow bike, ski boots and bike skis. I felt a twinge in my back and knew with certainty that I’d just exceeded the boundaries of my
personal limits.

Ducking the oncoming chairs, I clumsily regained my footing, my earlier confidence shattered. My back was hurting, and I still had to get down a slope that appeared, from my vantage point, to be of mammoth proportions. I had no idea
how I’d do it.

Some 40 tense, sweaty minutes later I’d completed sufficient S-curves to find myself at the lowest point of the slope. I was still shaky from fear and dry mouthed at the prospect of agonizing back pain that would significantly slow my pace and hinder my outdoor activities for the next few days.

I wish I had someone to blame, I thought, as I nursed a healthy dose of Advil and cursed my decision to attempt The Big Slope. I’d known my limits – I just hadn’t played within them.

The ground in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, looks the same as it might anywhere else, but in this quiet town of 12,000, looks are deceptive. Directly below it lies a 42 million-year-old fault line, created roughly the same time the area mountains were formed. Bubbling down there at depths of 12,000-to-15,000- feet are thermal waters, and once heated they spiral upwards to the earth’s surface.
Our first day in Steamboat Springs, a manic wind storm whistled furiously through town, lifting trees out of the earth and bringing the daily mountain activities to a standstill. Our plans to horseback ride and snowshoe were cancelled, but those bubbling waters beckoned with the promise of a deep, therapeutic soak – the kind that sooths your mind and body, whisks away your aches and pains and delivers you to a glorious state of lethargy.
There are more than 150 thermal springs in Steamboat¸ and back in the day you could choose to dip in several of them. Today though, only a couple remain open for public access. One is Strawberry Park Hot Springs, which boasts temperatures of 153 degrees. Located seven miles out of town on a rough dirt road, this is a more rustic, back-to-basics option that becomes clothing optional after dark. We opted for Old Town Hot Spring, which is fed by Heart Spring, the same spring that the Yampatika Ute Indians camped alongside and soaked in hundreds of years ago. The first bathhouse and pools fed by the spring was built in 1909, and old photographs on the wall depict a lone elk taking a graceful swim – evidence that the springs have nurtured humans and animals alike.
Elk trying to take a dip in the 102 degree water today would have a hard time getting through the door. Old Town Hot Springs sits alongside the busy Highway 40 at the foot of the mountain, its pools contained by wire fences. There’s a large lap pool, three dipping pools of varying temperatures and an ample swimming pool with a waterfall at one end, so bathers can pick and choose their perfect spot. The water contains a combination of natural bicarbonates, lithium and minerals whose combined effect is a whole lot more relaxing than a massage. Though if that’s what you want, you can get it at the sports and fitness facility located just indoors from the pools.
If there’s one spring that endears animals today, it’s the pungent Sulphur Spring, located across from the town library. This odiferous spring is the preferred bathing place of deer, elk, black bear and horses.
It was the springs that gave Steamboat its name back in 1874, when the first white pioneers ventured this way and noticed a geyser expelling water up to 14 feet in the air. The gushing water created a chugging sound that reminded them of a steamboat – hence the name Steamboat Springs. Sadly, within 35 years of their arrival there was no more chugging. Explosives used to blast for a new railroad irreparably damaged the geyser. A few decades later, another spring was lost to development, this one called the Soda Spring because of its high carbonation and lack of a sulphur taste. Once the town’s favorite drinking spring, Soda Spring was used to create lemonade by a nearby hotel. Then Highway 40 was built, and Soda Spring, too, was relegated extinct.
If you can tear yourself from the warm water at Old Town Hot Spring, there’s a self-guided walking trail that will lead you to five mineral springs in the space of a mile. If you’re up for a longer hike, head southwest on the steep path to Sulphur Cave, its porous rock lined with sulphur crystals. Toxic gases in the cave make it impossible for visitors to get close, but in 1988, an adventurous few spelunked in the cave with oxygen masks strapped to their faces. They revealed that a sulphur spring lies 30 feet from the cave’s chamber, and that judging by its strong flow, the water eventually reaches the Yampa River.

If I had my way, couples getting married would receive a how-to handbook, a little something they could read after all the wedding fuss has died down. Planning a wedding, choosing a gown, determining who sits where at the reception and opening gifts – these are the easiest parts of marriage. The more challenging parts come later, behind closed doors. That’s when you start to realize your spouse never replaces the toilet paper roll, takes a magazine into the toilet, is horribly flatulent in bed or has a habit of spending hour upon hour of supposed ‘couple time’ hostage to the television, computer or iPad. The million dollar question is, what are the Ten Commandments for a happy marriage? I asked couples with a decade or more of marriage under their belts what they thought. Here’s what they came back with:
1. The Six-Second Hug: Take time for a six-second hug each day, ensuring there’s no texting, emailing or phone calls occurring while it’s taking place. Embrace for that length of time and you can connect with your spouse in a more meaningful way than by a quick peck on the cheek or affectionate squeeze before you rush out the door. In six seconds, you can inhale their scent, feel the soft texture of their hair and get a body-to-body closeness that may just add a spring to your step all day long.
2. Keep Dating: “Twice a week we go to a nice restaurant for good food and decent wine,” jokes my friend Colin. “She goes on Mondays, I go on Tuesdays.” Quips aside, couples that play together, stay together, a phrase that’s particularly true once kids are born. Take time out to enjoy each other’s company, whether it’s dinner and a movie once a fortnight, or a day playin hooky from work so the two of you can just hang out. With time to simply be together doing something you both enjoy, it’s easier to remember the partner you fell in love with when you said “I Do.”
3. Sex It Up: Ignore the messages emanating from Cosmo and other magazines. It’s not about the G-Spot, the lingerie or the sex toys. Dr. Ruth Westheimer, bless her soul, had a heart full of wisdom when she encouraged couples to have as much sex (together) as possible. The secret ingredient to intimacy and a feeling of closeness, sex is the key to a healthy marriage.
4. Learn the art of silence: This tip comes from a relative who was married some 50 years before she passed away. “Just learn to keep quiet sometimes,” she told me, when I asked for the secret to such a long, happy marriage. An art in itself, learning to shut up is a skill worth mastering in marriage, if only to keep the peace. The last word isn’t always one worth having, and ending a dispute with an “I told you so” attitude doesn’t do much for camaraderie or a sense of partnership.
5. Forget Telepathy: You get to a point in a marriage where you just expect your spouse to know how you feel. Which is why many women feel it’s not necessary to verbalize their feelings. But telepathy is overrated, and good communicating is one of the most essential commandments of a good marriage. Let your partner know what you want, and don’t expect them to read your mind. If they learn telepathy, it’s an added bonus. But chances are, they’ll need words to recognize what you need and when you want it.
6. Compromise. “Marriage is about give, take, and compromise,” says Tammy, a mother of three. “We’ll never get our way all the time. But if both parties give and take a little, it’s possible to meet somewhere in the middle and hopefully live a happy, healthy and full marriage.”
7. Bad Vibes? Fight it out if it needs to be fought. Every marriage involves disputes – it’s how you resolve those disputes that makes or breaks your partnership. If there’s something you need to discuss, get it out of your system, then kiss and make up. But don’t use the word ‘always’ when you complain about your spouse. Don’t go to bed mad at each other. And don’t let it linger unresolved for months on end. Communicate, resolve and move forward.
8. Pick Your Battles. In a marriage, there’s lots of ‘small stuff,’ issues that may bug you but aren’t worth a full-on argument. The toilet seat that got left up. Smelly socks under the bed. A kitchen that was kosher until he decided to make dinner. The key is not to sweat the small stuff. Save the arguments for issues that matter deeply and remember, though your list of spousal irritations may be long, his is likely just as long.
9. Don’t Look For Trouble: You always hear the same excuses when people have an affair. “It just happened,” they will say. “It was a once-off mistake.” “S/he caught me in a moment of weakness.” I don’t buy it. People emit signals when they want others to know they are available, and those signals lead to glances, insinuations and conversations inappropriate for those of us who have tied the knot. Married couples owe it to each other to be faithful, and when that value slips, trust and loyalty are lost as well.
10. Forget the 50-50: There’s no such thing as 50-50 in a good marriage, so drop the compulsion to compare what he did to what you did. There’s no point keeping tabs on who made coffee last, who did the last carpool or who worked harder. Accept that each partner will do their share in the areas of their respective strengths, and that somehow, when two people pull together as one, the family unit will work and work well.

Whaddaya do when your town is in decay, its community bisected by political differences and impending economical ruination? This was Leavenworth, Wa. in the 1950s and 60s, when the re-routing of the railway meant the consequent demise of the timber industry. The city was literally hovering on the brink of extinction.

That’s when the idea of turning it into a Bavarian hamlet was first voiced. City planners hoped that by creating an Alpine village in Leavenworth, one complete with Bavarian food, festivals, horn-blowing, architecture and attire, tourism would become the city’s new economy, saving it from dusty ruin.

Fast forward 50 years and the Bavarian village has become a phenomenal success story and a testament to the economic power of tourism. Whether by choice or coercion, every retailer has embraced the Bavarian style of architecture, from Starbucks to Safeway and McDonalds. Signs on hotels bid travelers a “herzlicher wilkommen” and the Bavarian beer garden, with its live Latina music, is one of the city’s hottest spots.

No-one gives a hoot that Leavenworth is an illegitimate daughter of Bavaria, with only a small handful of real Bavarians who arrived well after the new theme was adopted. Visitors come for chamber music in the summer, outdoor art displays, Christmas lighting festivals in the winter and a myriad other festivals in between. Then, when they’re sated with beef franks, strudel and ice cream, they seek out the kind of outdoor adventures that makes Washington state legendary.

We found ourselves in Leavenworth this summer, and the town amazed us with its musical buzz and the sheer number of people enjoying its energy and charisma. In the town square a band played Edelweiss as a couple began an impromptu waltz. Across the way at the Munchen Haus Grill a lineup of hungry patrons waited for their orders of warm, buttery pretzels drizzled with rock salt, and bratwurst with sauerkraut. The streets were full of meandering families, many of them lovingly clasping their double-scoop ice creams, while up on the hill The Sound of Music was being performed to a sold-out audience.

We’d traveled deep into Washington State on Stevens Pass, a picturesque highway that trails the often fierce whitewater of the Wenatchee River on one side and the behemoth Cascade Mountains on the other. On the long and windy road, It’s hardly a place you’d expect to run into a Bavarian-style city devoid of Bavarian roots. But there Leavenworth is, smack-dab in front of you: its architectural style speaking loud and clear of Europe, even if 90 percent of its citizens have never been there.

After browsing through the stores, admiring the nutcrackers and eating our fill of bratwurst (a vegetarian version for this writer), we decided to explore the Wenatchee River, whose tumbling whitewater we’d eyed nervously from Highway 2, en route into town. With young children in tow, our choice was limited to the ‘family float’ at Osprey Rafting, a two-hour trip downstream with just enough bumps and splashing to keep the kids happy. Above us glided an osprey, searching the cold river for its lunch, while on either side of the river we had a bird’s eye view of stately homes perched on the cliff buttresses.

Later we saddled horses and took to the dusty paths along the Icicle River. The trail led us past Sleeping Lady Mountain, where the silhouette of a slumbering woman is etched into the rocks as if carved by a giant, artistic hand. Back in Leavenworth there was more artistry everywhere we looked, from the murals on store walls to the open-air canopies beneath which artists displayed renditions of the landscape around them.

But the ultimate landscape was the natural one that surrounded us, with snow-capped mountains and a rushing tumble of ice-cold whitewater on the river. Looking around, it was easy to see why Leavenworth’s residents refused to leave in the 60s. Their Bavarian theme was just a convenient way to entice visitors to explore their spellbinding location.

If You Go:

ð       Getting There: The closest airport is SeaTac International. From there, you can rent a car and climb the mountain pass along Highway 2 to Leavenworth, approximately two hours’ drive, or take Amtrak.

ð       For general information on Leavenworth, contact the Chamber of Commerce at (509) 548-5807; www.leavenworth.org

ð       Accommodation: The Enzian Inn features a daily alphorn serenade when its owner, Jordan Brown, breathes a deep baritone sound into his alp horn while balanced on the cusp of a flowerbox. The serenade occurs twice each morning outside the solarium, while guests dine on a European breakfast buffet. www.enzianinn.com; (800) 223-8511

ð       Osprey Rafting leads whitewater river excursions from April through September. Info: (800) 743-6269; www.ospreyrafting.com

ð       Icicle Outfitters & Guides leads walking tours suitable for adults and kids age six and older. (509) 763-3647; www.icicleoutfitters.com