Holden Village in September

One of the benefits of being jobless - 6 day trips in the middle of the week! My parents are living at Holden Village for the year. Holden Village is a mountain paradise. It is an old mining village that was sold to the Lutheran Church in 1960 and turned into a retreat center. It's quite an adventure to get there which makes it all the more worth while. But once you get there, it's relaxing, renewing and centering. There are no phones, tv, email or any contact with the outside world.


I took the train to Wenatchee where Mom met me and we stayed at the Holden B & B. After a wonderful breakfast with a woman who has the same birthday as her sister and has 2 girls with the same birthday (!), we hopped on the boat and rode up Lake Chelan.

After about 2 hours on the boat, we arrived at the Holden Dock and the bus was there to take us up the mountain.
And after about 40 minutes on a terrifying (but I understand safe) bus ride, we arrived in the village. Here is my view as I relax in the sun and read my book. The village center.

I stayed in Lodge One. You really have a view of the mountains everywhere but I think mine was pretty spectacular.


I took a tour of the village to see what people were doing - Mom works in the kitchen and is soon to officially be in charge of everything!


Dad teaches high school - 7 students grades 7-12. Two of his students are German so while I was there I taught a couple TEFL lessons. (This was the end of lunch break.)


No trip to Holden is complete without a quick hike to the trail junction (or maybe it's just the picture that is important!?) . It's about 3 miles round trip I think.

It was a musical weekend. Mom and I played all the time - practicing as well as for vespers - and on Saturday night we gave a recital with some of our old favorites. Poulenc, Handel, Massenet, Gluck, Bolling and Bloch. I'm so lucky to have a mom like this one!


Sunday morning we pulled Dad away from his classroom (I think he was reading Kant while learning the physics of the mine!) and took a hike to Copper Basin. If you haven't been to Holden, Copper Basin is known as the Holden Stair Climber - its the shortest hike you can do, 5 miles straight up.

But the rewards were worth it!

And once we made it to the basin we relaxed and ate our lunch in the sun. Bears are common here this time of year but we didn't see any - just lots of hungry chipmunks.




Dad and I are training for the Seattle Half Marathon (with Johann too!) so we did a lot of running while we were there. On my last day we got up at 6:30 and ran. We were once again rewarded with the Holden views. This is looking out of the Village, up the valley. No, that's not a fire, it's the sunrise hitting Dumbell Mountain.

There will be lots of snow soon but if you want to go, check out www.holdenvillage.org.