Great few days in Leavenworth which is a truly unique place - very much the miracle town that they call it - a failed town based on lumber and train industry, transformed into a thriving bavarain tourist destination.

Staying with Dean and Linda Johnson who are lovely people. They live up on a hill overlooking the valley in a beautiful chalet style house. Yesterday was a great day - met up with Glen Johnson a school superintendent for the small district of Cashmere. Visited the Elementary, Middle and High School in the area - fantastic buildings, functional rather than ambitious in design but very well looked after. They completely rebuilt their middle school in 2005 - interestingly because they were already over the space threshold set by state government for funding (based on no of pupils) in order to do this they had to raise the $16m through a 'bond'. This effectively means that the money was raised by the Local Community through a local levy (about $35 a month each) which is paying for the bond over a 20 year period - they vote on such things all the time.

The national 'no child left behind' system (100% of kids must meet certain standards by certain ages or the school risks being taken into a remedial programme) sits on top of what is a highly decentralised educational system compared to the UK. From what I can see there are huge benefits to this but it also results in wide differences in the funding, resources and achievement of some schools over others - makes universal national standards difficult for some educators to accept.

Anyway, after a fascinating morning and lunch with Glen we went to Rocky Reach dam to meet Kirby and Ron who took us round. Visually smaller than Revelstoke Dam, but higher volumes of water and therefore more power. Was interesting to hear about the lengths they have gone to try and protect migrating salmon - something that still worries a huge amount of people and is starting to precipitate the growth of wind farm energy which is about 90% less reliable than hydroelectric!

Finished the day with a 3 hour hike with Dean up Icicle ridge. Fantastic walk topped off by an exciting encounter with a brown bear which complimented the black bear I had seen earlier in the morning. I was a little worried at first, but Dean didnt seemed concerned at all and I figured I could run faster than him anyway so should be ok!