Poker Run

So far this year, for the Northwest, La Nina has been a bust. Our mountains have had less snow than ever. Considering we just purchased two snowmobiles this season, this has not been good news for us. We’ve been snowmobiling twice this year, once in Montana and once up by Snoqualmie. Since the mountains close to us have not had snow in 6 weeks we’ve been looking for new areas we can go that are within a reasonable driving distance. Rob found an event put on by a the Lake Chelan Snowmobile Club called the Poker Run. It is a fund raising event for their club. We checked it out on the website and decided it would be a fun thing to try out.

We left on Friday after I got home from work and drove to Chelan. We checked into Cambell’s Hotel which we absolutely loved. Huge, comfortable bed, huge room, great views. It was great. We highly recommend it if you ever to to Chelan. After a great nights rest, we headed to the town of Manson to enjoy a community sponsored breakfast at their community center. I’m pretty sure everyone was over the age of 65, but the food was great! Then we headed up to the snopark to draw our first card.

I’ve never participated in a poker run before but it was a lot of fun. Everyone starts at the same place and you draw a card from a hat. You then drive to 4 other stops and do the same thing. You have sheet of paper that is stamped according to the card that you drew. The goal is to get the highest hand in poker and you win. It was only $5 to enter, they served us lunch, and we got to learn about a whole new snowmobiling trail system. I thought it was definitely money well spent.

Rob and I both got off to a great start by drawing Aces out of the first hat. There was plenty of time to check out the area and play around a bit in the snow. It was an area we really liked and we are planning to go back again. The third stop was at the club’s warming hut where they served us hamburgers and hot dogs. We met some really nice people who were already planning ahead and inviting Rob to come back and go dirt biking with them.

Rob had two aces to start, but his hand quickly lost steam. I ended up with the second best hand of the day by drawing Three Aces and Two Kings. I even won $75! WOOOHOOO!

We had a great time, and met some great people. We are hoping to be able to do it again next year. In the meantime we are hoping for a little more snow in our area so we can go sledding a little closer to home.

Rob Striking a pose at the top of the hill. The views all day were amazing. It was perfectly sunny and there were just enough trees to make it beautiful but not too many to block your view.

Even in Chelan conditions were a bit sketchy. We rode about 65 miles total on Saturday and 55 of those miles were beautifully snow covered. The first few miles in and the last few miles out were a little sketchy with not much snow in some spots as you can tell from the pic. Even still, the snow on top was great.

After a day of snowmobiling, we stopped at the Apple Cup Café . It was recommended by several local residents so we decided to try it. We weren’t disappointed. We both ordered Chicken Fried Steak. YUM! Service was great, food was great. Rob loved it so much we decided to go back for breakfast the next morning. If you ever go to Chelan you’ll have to check it out.

On the way home we stopped by Leavenworth to check it out. After our trip to Munich a few years ago, it was hard for us to be impressed. We did stop and get a hot chocolate and a German pretzel, which of course was delicious.

All-in-all it was a great weekend!