home again...

It has been awhile since i posted, and now it seems that the tables have turned. While once I was posting for my family to see what Tony and I were up to. It seems that now i am posting for our new out of state "family" to see what is going on in our lives. Now that we are settling in and hopefully getting ready to buy a house, it is pretty solid that we have hung up our travel towels. And we miss our out states buddies even more. Hopefully if we get the home that we bid on last night, we will start our airplace account ( what was once our furniture account) so that we can come back to the places that we began to call home over the last three years.

On another, totally unrelated note. Last night we were having a little fire with some friends when suddenly we were all attacked by bees. I know that my mom has been aggitating one of the hives that she has in the yard ( by spraying them with water late in the evening.) But we didn't harrass any of them last night. Suddenly everyone was yelling and swatting at things. My brother got stung twice, Tony once- on the forehead, and me on my ankle. I haven't been stung by a bee since I was like 8 years old, and i don't remember it hurting so much. Still this morning tony and i are complaining that it stings like hell. Oh well, hopefully i don't become terrified of bees like i was of mice when i had the mouse infestation.

I promise that once Tony and i move into a house ( hopefully the one that we LOVED!) i will add some new photos of our drive across country and keep this blog updated.

horselets and cowlets

Yesterday Tony and i didn't get to bed until late due to the second wind after being forced to drive for 100 extra miles until we found a vacancy, because of that we got off to a later start today. We hit the road about 9:30 and made our way to yellowstone park. On our way to the park we saw so many new born and tiny little calves and colts, although we prefer to call them horselets and cowlets! We sent a quick message to Kaitlin who reminded us that if we see any bearlets to be careful!

We were only about an hour and half from it, so it didn't take long to get to, but we did spend a lot of time there. I wish that this was our vacation and not a trip to get us back to work because we could have hiked for days out there! It was so gorgeous, many changing climates from the low desert like areas to the chilly mountain air at 10000 feet. We saw a lot of free roaming bison on our way to the top of the mountain. On our way through the park we did take a little hike through a geothermal area where there were hot and some hot and stinky geyers and sulferic mineral springs. We got to see a few of the geyers blow into the sky about 20-25 feet. It is pretty amazing. We did not, however wait for old faithful to blow. That would have meant waiting an hour and half. We thought it over but after last night's "no vacancy" night we thought it would be a good idea to get to a hotel before dark since there is a high population of large elk and other huge game around here, just waiting for nightfall to run in front of your car.

Once we got to the south entrance/exit of yellowstone it took us directly into the grand tetons. I can not say which one of the parks was more magnificent!!! They were both so fresh and clean and wild. Unfortunately we didn't see any bear or moose, which Tony and i really had hoped for. But on the bright side, we now know that my lil' crv can tow a trailer full of shit up a pass greater than 9500 feet high!

We found a place to sleep for the night and tomorrow we are going to be back on track towards seeing Mount rushmore, Crazy Horse, the blackhills and the badlands.

it can't rain all the time

Although we planned on leaving early in the morning yesteday to start our long journey home, a few things changed our plans and we left about 2 hours later than we first planned.
After out last day of work, we initally planned a small dinner with a few friends, but then it grew into a pretty large group and we all went to cancan for a few drinks. Tony and i really only had one, although many were bought for us: ) we had a lot of work do on friday.
After some hard good-byes-but not final ones, because we will be back to visit soon-we walked back to our place and got right to bed. Friday morning we packed all day long. After packing nearly everything in the trailer, we wentfor our last dinner at Belltown pizza with our friend Regina.
We woke up early Saturday morning, put the last of our things in the car and drove east. It was a great day of driving. About 3 or 4 hours into the drive, we watched some guy riding his bike backwards on the freeway. Not backwards like he was sitting the wrong way. backwards, like he was sitting on a bike, in a normal fashion, headed turned slightly around, and pedaling the bike backwards and the bike was going backwards!!! We nearly swerved off the road trying to figure it out!
Our ride went smoothly, and we got about 600 miles under our belts when we decided to stop in Butte, MT. Mostly because it was the nearest city that had hotels, that wasn't right on top of yellowstone park, were there surely would be no vacancies.
Tony got out of the car and went in to get a room, and was promptly turned away, as with the next hotel and the last one that we tried.
Turns out this is a big weekend for Butte. There was a rodeo, a fair, and a folk festival, rendering all hotels, motels, and inn useless and full!
We drove another 100 miles to the next town and although nearly every hotel was booked, the nice fella' at the ramada ( which i vowed to not make fun of-the hotel that is- for a least 6 months) was nice enought to call 4 or 5 hotels and got us the room we stayed in last night. The lewis and clark motel. It wasn't a bad place, but it is also connected to a casino! there will be some photos when we can upload.
We decided to skip glaceier national park because it is a steep uphill ride and 8 hours out of the way. We weren't worried about wasting time, but the uphill battle with our trailer was not worth it.
Today we are going to ride through and check out yellowstone, grand tetons and hopefully stay just outside of south dakota were we hope to see mt. rushmore and crazy horse before taking the longest ride across the plains.
more to come. gotta get some coffee and go!

Going away parties!

Last night we had our first going away party. A group of folks from work got together and Elysian brewery and once again, i forgot my camera. I may get some photos later from a friend but for now, none.
Anyway we had a nice dinner and a lot of drinks, which never ends well with a giant group of ER employees. Needless to say, today was spent as a lazy day by tony and i.
We don't really have that much to pack this time since we are donating most of our stuff ( clothes, dishes, bowls, etc) since we have all nice new stuff at home.
Tonight we are going to dinner with Kaitlin, Marcia and her husband for one move going away dinner. And i think later this week we are going to go out with Regina and her husband for our, i think, last dinner. It has to be, because we are going to be leaving very early for home next saturday! I can't wait!
Our trip home is going to be a busy one. With gas prices so high and us starting to look for a house, we are going to try to make the most of this trip. We are planning on going to Glacier national park, yellowstone park, the badlands, mt. rushmore, black hills, crazy horse and a few others that i can not remember right now. We will be taking a million photos and will try to get hotels with wifi so i can post the whole trip. See you soon!:)

Henna hair dye

I just noticed that in the last post, i said Tuesday, it was on Tuesday, but of last week.
This tuesday Tony had to work so Kaitlin and i had a martini and movies day. The plan was for her to come over so i could perfect my cucumber martini and we could watch a few flicks. Between the time we decided to do this, we also decided to color our hair again.
The last time we dyed each other's hair and did hightlights, i had bought this natural henna hair dye, but we didn't have the time to do it.
So, this time i figured if we were going to be watching movies we would have all kinds of time. So Kaitlin started to mix up the dye and i was making martinis. Once she got it mixed up and in my hair it had been about an hour. It is supposed to stay in the hair about 2 hours. So i colored and highlighted her hair, made more martini's and started dinner.Note, we didn't even get to the movies yet.
With dinner almost ready, i rinsed my hair and lo and behold IT LOOKED EXACTLY THE SAME!!!! The old highlights weren't even colored. Although i guess we shouldn't have expected anything less, since the two of us tend to get things messed up a lot :)
So we drove to bartell and got real hair dye and started all over again!
FINALLY when tony was already home we started to watch our movies, and they stunk!
We watched 27 dresses and bella. Both were stinkers.
Oh well. It was a really fun say otherwise and i did perfect the marinis!
Our internet is going to be shut off tomorrow since we will be home soon, so i am going to post my butt off tonight and tomorrow and then try to do so on the road. Hope you have a lot of free time for reading!

out and about

Tuesday Tony and I were both off on the same day so we planned on going kayaing.

We went for lunch first at Aqua Verde, which is a little place the uses local produce to m ake the most amazing meixan food ever! I had portabello tacos and tony had a burrito but he had these chili mashed potatoes that were so delicious.

Conviently enough it is located above where we rented our kayaks. We spent an hour and half kayaking through lake union, the arboretum and a little bit of lake washington.

It was so astounding. We were on a doulble kayak paddling between giant yachts and tour boats. Once we had our fill we docked our boat ( decided that we need to buy one) and drove over to the arb. Unfortunately we didn't have a camera, other than the waterproof dispoable one. We ended up at the Japenese Garden which was amazing. There was a coi pond that had the biggest and brightest fish that i have ever seen!

After that, we sat in the arb beneath the trees and enjoyed the greatest day together.

Once we got our fill of the seattle sunshine we met our friend Regina for dinner. She used to work with us at DRH and recently moved here. We got to meet her husband and newish little boy-he is almost 2. Once we had dinner we walked to get ice cream at this place that has really unusual but very scrumptious flavors. I had a balsamic strawberry-which i knew would be delicious since i just learned how to make balsamic reduced strawberries :)
We had a great time catching up and then Regina posed the question that everyone keeps asking us "why don't you two stay here for awhile longer?"
I hate that question so much because we LOVE it out here. There are soo many reasons to stay, but the real reason we are coming home is because 3 years is a long time to be away from our friends and family. Even though we have made some amazing friends that i know we will keep forever, it is hard to be away from the small things that make home "home."
I am really excited for our final road trip back through the states, but it is really sad that we are no longer travelers. I am sure that once i get home and start house hunting and planning trips to california to visit our good friends there and then later, back here to see our new friends, it will be a little less depressing.

Mt St disappointment

So this final schedule that tony and i have, we basically work exactly opposite days. This means that although we extended to that we could go hiking together, we basically can never do anything together because one of us is always at work...

That is until this past week. I had requested some time off hoping that Tara would be able to make it out here, but since she was not able to, Tony and i planned a trip with our good friend Kaitlin. She has lived her less than a year, but is a seattle resident and she also had not yet been to mt st helen, so we decided to take a camping trip.

I should preempt this with the fact that the both of us ( kaitin and i ) are a bit accident prone and should not have planned a trip together to an active volcano, but we did and it didn't erupt, so maybe the curse of the idiot girls is lifted. we shall see.

Anyway she had to work on saturday night so we picked her up after work and drove to Olympia where her family lives. We had a really nice brunch with her mom and dad ( it was father's day after all) and then made our way to the volcano. We stayed in a state park a mere 30 miles from the volcano, in a yurt. I have wanted to stay in a yurt since we moved to cali and that never happened. SO when i discovered that they rented them at the state park we all jumped at the chance.

It was really cool, like a tee-pee cabin hybrid. It can withstand tornado like winds, torrential rainstorms and bears!

Anyway we got there in time to check in and let Kaitlin get some sleep. While she took a nap, tony and took a hike around the lake that used to be huge before the mt blew.

After a few hours we headed back to the camp to start a fire so we could get dinner on. We got back and after some hot dogs ( and veggie dogs) and some beers, called it a night.

Once we awoke, ate some breakfast and got the yurt cleaned up, we drove up to the volcano.

It was such an amazing sight and i have to say that it is one of my favorite things that we have done so far. In fact, it is fair to say that it was on my top ten of the coolest things that i have ever seen.

It was really heartbreaking to watch the movies and see the exhibits of how quickly the whole thing occur ed. And although i was small and barely remember it even happening, it was amazing to see how this one volcano's eruption effected the whole world for weeks.

When we got close enough to the crated that used to be the top of the volcano before it erupted we could see little puffs of black smoke coming out it. I guess the ranger said that is not uncommon because it is still active, along with nearly all the other mountain/volcanoes out here. Mt. rainer, Crater lake, Mt hood, Mt.shasta.. a lot of the ones that tony and i have been to. But if anything happens out here, it is not our fault!

Once we got a bit of hiking in and listened to all the ranger lectures that we could we made our way out of the park. That night we had a date at cape disappointment.

Yes, that is a real place, on the southern most part of the state it is a state park that rest between the pacific ocean and the columbia river. It was about a 2 and half hour drive from mt. st helen.

We got there later at night because we spent the day at the volcano. Famished, tony started the fire while kaitlin and i went to get more wood. When we finally got back to the park, we saw tony in the cabin peeking out of the windows. We thought that he was worried about us because it took us so long to find what we needed. But really our cabin was right on top of a family of brave raccoons!!! They were not afraid of ANYTHING! Not tony stomping at them, throwing a log, not of kaitlin hissing and yelling at them, or me just yelling "git" over and over.

It was funny for a minute but soon got annoying because as we were trying to cook dinner those effers would not leave us alone!.

They finally began to raid other campers and soon get into fights amongst themselves, and after a few drinks too many, that was hilarious to us. i wish i could explain why, but i really don't know. Chasing the raccoons out of our campsite went from annoying to kinda fun.

In the morning we got the car packed and did some more hiking and playing the this or that game. It is kinda' like would you rather but a bit more final.

Anyway after we got our fill of hiking, we began what we thought was going to be a nice drive up the coast. Instead we ended up at the edge of a little peninsula that would not get us anywhere near home and was full of weirdos.

First there was the strange couple overlooking the beached dead harbor sea. We couldn't tell if they were lovers or mother and son. And they kept trying to tell us where we could see some "real live seals"

Then there was the car covered in small plastic feline figurines. It actually had a tail coming off of the hitch, i tried to get a photo, but failed miserably.

When we finally got back on the 101, we made our way back to olympia and had dinner with Kaitlin's dad.

By the time we got back to seattle, it was 10:30 and tony and i had to work the next day 7. So along with being really pissed to have to come back to work after a great vacation, we didn't get enough sleep...

oh well. more to come., i am sure. Tomorrow we are going to try to go kayaking and then have dinner with a friend that used to work with us at drh and just took a faculty position out here at the university. It stinks that now that we are ready to leave, I have made a really great friend and two more of our friends are moving out here! Damnit

Barbie was here

So our time in seattle is coming to an end and i know i have promised over and over again that i would keepup with the blogs, but there is so much that i want to do on my days off that i have not been able to put myself in front of the computer.

Since it is 10:30 at night and i promise more than one person I would update here i go....

So over memorial day weekend barbie came to visit! We picked her up late at night and as always went for our favorite Belltown Pizza! Tony had to work at 7am the next day so we made it a short night, which was fine, because lil' Barb was up all stinkin' day. In the morning i got up to drive tony to work and when i got home, our visitor was already dressed and ready to go. SO the two of us went off for a fantastic breakfast at one of our favorite places to go, Bacca. They make these hand squeezed amazing mixtures of juices that are so fresh you feel like there might be sticks from the trees in it :)

After breakfast we walked around Pike Place market for a minute and i tried to give her the lay of the land before i had to get to work at 11. The next few days after that we had off.

On saturday it looked like rain, so we didn't go hiking like we planned. Instead tony stayed home to watch either a hockey game or a basketball game and barbie and i went out to enjoy the city, mostly downtown. Once the game was over we picked up tony and went to dinner at bamboo garden, another one of my favorite veggie chinese places to eat. Barb liked it and we all shared each other's food, she particularly enjoyed the 'chicken' soy balls :)

After dinner, since we save a little room, we walked to the chocolate box to get some delicious gelato!!!!

The next day we got up nice and early, but still missed the ferry to bremerton island. So we took the next one to Bainbridge and from there drove to the Dungenese spit. This is where Barbie decided that -in not so many words- that i suck :)

we went on a 5 mile hike on the beach. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it is a sandbar that separates the san juan straits with a bay and so the size of the sandbar gets smaller the longer you are there, and it is not the greatest surface for hiking. In otherwords a mear 5 mile hike takes 3 hours! It was really fun and then we got tired.. i also had to go pee, and the last time that Tony and i hiked it alone, there was no one around, so you could pretty much just go.

Once we got back to the car, we had some snacks and were going to go up the mountains, until we found this crazy zoo like place.

It was called the Olympic pennisula game farm. It was someone's personal property that had saved/bought/who knows what a bunch of huge animals ( like a white rhino, zebras, yak, bison, grizzly and black bear) and pretty much let them roam free while you drive your car through it. Well, the rhino and the bear, along with tigers, lions and wolves were in cages, but everything else was just hanging out. It was cool, but freaked me out a bit since the zebra were right next to my car trying to get food from us ( even though we weren't trying to feed them). We drove through that and then made the trek back home.

The next day was memorial day and we were all pretty pooped from the last day's hike so we laid low. Although i promised barbie that i would take her to the mountains and i am glad that i waited until that day.

When we were driving up there, it began to rain REALLY hard, which it never does here. For real, it rains but never like a good hard Michigan rain. Once we were about a half an hour from my place we saw the most beautiful doulbe rainbow. so we pulled off to the closest exit and got some great photos.

Unfortunately i had to work the next morning, but i got out in time for tony and barb to pick me up and we all got dinner together before she had to get on her flight. I was praying that her flight was canceled so we could hang a few more days, but alas, the only time the plane isn't full is when we were all hoping that it was.

I had so much fun when she was here! But as soon as she left it was back to work-BOOO

Urban assault

My friend kaitlin found this really cool bike ride/race about a month ago. I didn't have my schedule until the week before, so as soon as I knew i could do it, we signed up. There were 4 of us, two teams of 2. It was a like a road rally/bike race. So we kinda' had to know a little bit about Seattle, ok, a lot about it. BUT... no one on our teams was actually from here. In fact no one on our teams had been here for more than a year. Needless to say we had a bit of a disadvantage, which was fine because we were just in it for the fun and the fact that it was sponsored by new belgium brewery. few weeks ago

So the race started at 10 am, but we had to be there at 9 to sign some papers. At the beginning of the week we decided that our teams would be the Pirate Nurses, since, well duh, we were all nurses. Kaitlin had some really cool shirts made up and put our names on them and my teammate Nora bought these fun jolly rogers flags to attach to our bikes. The goal of the assault was to get to 5 check points around the city and either answer puzzles or do some kind of obstacle course.

The first stop was REI where we had to roam the grounds of the mountain bike trail and find letters and then unscramble them to earn proof that we really did finish. We called Tony at work and had him help us out. Once we got outta there, it was a serious uphill climb to the next stop. Anyone who has been here has an idea about the hill situation, anyone who hasn't visited, just know that the ER that i work for it on the 6th floor and it is "ground" level and it is only one street from the 1st floor ( so the hill ascends nearly 60 feet between one block and it sucks to bike up!!!)

We got to the next checkpoint and had no idea about the answer to the question. It was a bunny missing an ear and some seemingly random quote. I called a friend of mine that has lived here his whole life and he had no idea. Somehow we decided it was a coffee or tea shop, so he gave me the phone number to Remedy Teas where the girl that answered the phone couldn't have been nicer. I very charmingly, as my friends said, explained the situation and she asked everyone at the place if they knew what the hell i was talking about. As it turns out the bunny is a mascot for a biking club in the city. So we had to do a little uphill ( don't ask me, but the laws of uphill/downhill don't work here, even though we went uphill to get to the last checkpoint, we still had a lot of uphill on the way back!!!!)

From there we had to get to a lot of other check points, but once we got to them they were not brain busters, but physical activities that were sooooo much fun. In one we had to use mini kegs as stilts and race across this park. In another we had to ride on tiny bikes with our partner on the pegs and she had to joust some rings that were on traffic cones. The last obstacle was "human wheelbarrel". In this one, one of the teammates had to hold onto a wheel while the other held her legs and pushed her around the course. It was really fun! We had two checkpoints left, but after 4 hours of riding, my friends wanted to get to the beer booth before they closed. So we skipped the last two checkpoints and took a break.

Afterwards there was food and beer and live music, no to mention a raffle and the prizes.,

I won a Timbuk2 messenger bag ( i was going to buy one recently but they are like 200 bucks) for knowing a Santogold song!

Afterwards, we biked back to my place and everyone went there separate ways...after all we needed showers and naps!

There is one in Chicago when i get home, sometime in september, i hope that i can convinve tony and some other that we should all do it!!!

eric and maria's visit

A few weeks ago Eric and Maria came up to the PNW for a visit. It has been awhile-this time my excuse is more valid than work. i was waiting for him to email me some photos.

Tony and I had to work a few days that they were here, so they had to entertain themselves for those days, but i am sure that it was not hard to do here. There is so much to do.

I know for sure that they took the underground tour that i mentioned when scott and bridgette came to visit. i also think that they had a day at the space needle and hit up a few bars for some music.

The things that we all got to do together were really fun. I took them to a few bars that we like to go to. Shorty's is one of them, it serves the 'seattle dog" which i didn't even know existed until a month ago. It is a hotdog ( or veggie dog) with fresh tomatoes and cream cheese on it. It sounds a little weird, but it is sooo good. So one day after work I took the kids to get one. I think Eric was a fan. I also took them to Bruce and Brandon Lee's gravesite, the Fremont troll and for delicous Vegan Garden pho!

During the week that they were in town was also Tony's birthday. Usually we go away for his birthday, but there is so much to do here we decided to stick around. Sorta. We drove 2 hours southeast and went to the Northwest trek. It is like a zoo, but the animals are free to roam and the people are in the cages. Well, kinda like cages, the animals have over 400 acres to roam and there is a tram that drives through for viewing. So the animals, all native to the pacific northwest get to live like they would in the wild. It was fascinating. There were a lot of animals that I have seen driving across the country, but it was cool to see them with new babies and some that were about to delivery any minute. we watched an adorable little mountain goat race up the side of a cliff. Turns out those little folks can run after only being alive for 3 days!

After we finished the tram ride, there were also other animals who were still allowed to roam, but they had to stay in their "cages" for obvious reasons. the grizzly bears, wolverines, owls, wolves and coyotes were all in separate areas of the trek. The spaces that they lived was much closer to the wild than any zoo i have ever been to. i guess it was the first zoo to ever keep the animals in their real natural habitat.

Although it was a little freaky to learn that there are grizzlies in washington. I think because they are no longer native to california, i thought that was the same for up here too. guess not. and now i know for sure that Tony and I will go with other people when we hike around here.

On our way out of the trek we saw two baby squirrels!!! They were so loud, it is weird that you don't often see baby squirrels, but you sure can hear them. and they are wicked fast!

Once we left the trek, we drove another 45 minutes up to Mt. Rainer. We didn't get to do too much hiking because, once again there was still alot of snow there.

Much less than when Sarah and Mark were in town. Once we got to paradise lodge around 7000 feet up the mountain, there was still 14 feet of snow on it!

We hung out there a bit, while Eric climbed the top of the snow bank ala King of the mountain style from grade school. Once he realized that he was the only one competing for king, he came down and we headed out of the park before dark.

We stopped and had a little dinner before the long drive home. We got home around 12:30 and had to get right to bed. Eric and Maria had a very early flight (6:45) and I had to work in the afternoon. I think that they had a good time here. It was nice to see Eric get excited about something. he really liked going to Mt. Rainer.. and it takes a lot for him to be, or at least to show that he is amazed!