The Boeing Factory: Everett and Leavenworth (18-20 June)

June 20, 2018

On Monday (18 June) we crossed over the border to Ferndale, a simple trip of about 26 miles designed to get us through the border and join two new motorhome couples. This border is apparently quite strict on taking fruit and vegetables from Canada to the USA so we had a list of what we had and we were prepared to discard stuff.

We began by joining the wrong queue and watched other vehicles, including those of our companions, move twice as quickly. After 40 minutes we finally reached the front and had a pleasant discussion with the customs guy whose only question was how long we had been in the queue. He was sorry that we’d had to wait so long and wrote a chit instructing those searching vehicles that we were clear and to pass us straight through. We sailed past one of the motorhomes that had passed us earlier and were only just preceded by another which had commenced the journey 20 minutes before us. Our companions had had to fill out forms, had their vehicles searched and forfeited fruit and vegetables. So, the slow queue wasn’t quite so slow; the hare and tortoise story came to mind.

Having gained our freedom we drove to the coast and entered Blaine, a pretty town with a small marina, and empty shops and streets.

The following day we drove to Everett and the Boeing Factory. We were booked on a 90 minute tour and saw aircraft being manufactured. Most of the tour was in one of the factories which covered 98 acres (about 39 hectares). It had several assembly lines. We saw a 747 Dash 8 cargo plane, a line of 777s, and Dreamliners. They also make a lot of military planes. It was difficult to get a sense of scale as these planes are so big but the factory is enormous and it dwarfed the planes. It looked a bit like one of Oliver’s Lego constructions. We didn’t take photos as we were not allowed to have phones, cameras, bags, etc. However, their own website shows a lot of stuff and they also have a Youtube channel. We were lucky enough to be there when a 747 Dreamlifter landed and opened up by swinging its tail around like a door on hinges. It holds the largest cargo in the world and is mainly used to fly in components for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from other parts of the world.

Next we travelled to Leavenworth, driving through the Cascades. We had previously been in the Cascades in 1996 when we took the Empire Builder train from Seattle to Chicago. Some of this trip followed the railway and it certainly rekindled our memories of the earlier trip. There are more varieties of trees that we had seen further north, even in much of British Columbia, and they are taller and thicker.

We climbed over a steep pass and could see slopes where avalanches and slips had wiped out the trees and the area was regenerating. There was a large ski area with tows leading to trails snaking through the forests. It must be great to drive to a ski field on a paved highway, complete with passing lanes.

The road over the Cascades descends over 4,000 feet and then suddenly becomes flat; that’s Leavenworth. It became the headquarters of the Great Northern Railway in the early 1900s but, when the railroad relocated, the town struggled for survival until the community agreed to remodel themselves as a Bavarian style town. Our stay was for two nights in an RV park about 3 miles out of town. On Wednesday (20 June) we inspected the town. Is kitsch a Barvarian word? We were exposed to sausages, craft beer, wines (but no evidence of vineyards), yodelling, pastries, tankards, and people in costume. There is a nutcracker museum boasting in excess of 5,000 nutcrackers; no, we didn’t.