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