Our New Digs

So after Halloween weekend we moved into our new place in Tacoma, WA.  We're in the north part of Tacoma, up near Puget Sound University.  It's a nice neighborhood and we are enjoying it very much.

We're renting a house from the homeowners while they travel in Asia for three months.  We got a really good deal on the rent due to the fact that not many people want to live in a house for three months and then pick up and move again... call us crazy I guess.

We're taking care of a few critters for the owners, a cat named Ese and six laying hens.  It's been a lot of fun having a pet in the house again.  It reminds us why we had Porter in the first place.  Ese is the perfect cat too.  Doesn't scratch or bite, isn't snotty like most cats, and keeps us warm while we're watching TV.  Having chickens is a blast too actually.  They're laying four eggs a day on average and all we have to do is let them out in the morning and close them in at night.  The food and water are in dispensers in the coop, so we just fill them once a week.  Otherwise we give them our veggie trimmings and they are happy as clams.

Kris is working full time again.  She has four days of work right down the road about a mile and once a week she drives to Puyalip which is about ten miles away.  She is getting over a cold but otherwise doing very well.  I'm working at the REI call center taking orders over the phone.  The building is in Sumner, WA which is around 14 miles away.  I'm still training but the job is straightforward and the deals on gear are excellent, which is the only reason I'm there.

On that topic I picked up a new pair of powder skis this fall I'm really excited about.  They are Bluehouse Maestros and they are 189cm long and 118mm wide.  For those of you that don't ski these are much fatter than what we East Coasters usually ski on.  They should be perfect for the big dumps we get out here.  I plan on posting a full review of them once I get them out a few times for the season.  Stay tuned.

Otherwise things are pretty normal here.  The weather was really nice up until yesterday, but now it's taken a severe turn for the worse.  Oh well, it is fall.  Hopefully the snow will fly soon!

That pretty much catches you up on what's going on.  Hope you're all doing well!  Kris and I will be moving out of here at the end of January and Kris will be starting massage school in early March.  This means we'll have the month of February free... and we're planning on coming home!

Talk to you soon,

Will and Kris

Moving Forward

We traveled up the coast of California for a few more days and then headed inland.  We made a quick visit to Sonoma and Napa to pick up some of our favorite bottles.  Our allotted time for vacation was quickly running out so we jumped back on I5 and headed for WA.

Once back in the Puget Sound area we met back up with friends to celebrate Halloween.  This time of year is usually a huge pain in the ass for me due to the fact I never have a costume.  I usually spend two days before running around trying to find some stupid theme that I can dress up as.  It's nerve racking.

This year I was lucky enough to stumble across a hand made uncle same coat in CA.  It fit quite well indeed and only cost $16, booyaah!  Once I had the coat it was as simple as finding cloth to make a pair of pants, and finding the hat.  Neither of these chores was too complicated.  With a little help from Sarah's aunt Jeannine, and her sewing machine, I whipped up a pair of patriotic pants that would make even Betsy Ross proud.

My lovely and talented wife picked up on the theme immediately.  She bought three yards of fabric, a solar powered yard lantern and plastic crown and boom, she was the Statue of Liberty!

Pretty cute couple don't you think?  As luck would have it we were to attend two events for the Halloween weekend.  The first was a house party at a friend of a friends house.  A band, consisting of friends of friends, was scheduled to play.  The band was going to play the Pink Floyd album "Animals" in its entirety...  Now I have to tell those of you that don't know I had a serious love affair with this album while I was in college.  My buddies and I spend many a late night on the dirt roads in Bradley with this album pumping on the stereo.  Needless to say I was very excited.

The venue met all my expectations.  When we arrived we were impressed by both the stage setup and the costumed guests.

The band got things going with a few originals and then broke into an amazing version of Funky Town that had everyone kicking up their heels!  With live music, two kegs of beer, and all the eccentric folks you could handle it was a night to be remembered.  I ended up listening to the last few songs from the backseat of a friends car due to imbibing a little too much... perfect.
On Sunday we drove up to Belingham to meet some more friends and see the band Polecat play.  More debauchery ensued including two of our friends dancing shoeless at the venue for hours, making out with the yeti from Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and the longest walk home ever...

The band played well but it was a little too Halloween themed for me.  It was also a bit hot for a overcoat, top hat and bow tie...  but we had a lot of fun anyway.

California

After the river trip we spent one more night camping at Lake Mead.  In the morning we decided that we had enough of the desert and pointed the van west towards California.  We had plans to bypass Los Angeles and hit the coast at Ventura.

Once in Ventura we drove to the Channel Islands National Park visitors center.  We got some information on the islands and then headed over to buy tickets for the boat ride across.  For those of you that don't know what the Channel Islands are this is the link to the park site: 

http://www.nps.gov/chis/index.htm

The islands became a national park, quite recently actually, in 1980.  The park consists of four islands spread out roughly east to west and one island located much further to the south.  The main four islands are about an hour and a half boat ride from Ventura.  We decided to take the boat over to Santa Cruz and hike around for the day.

The morning of our departure was socked in with a damp, pea soup fog.  We shouldered our packs and headed for the boat.  Of course once aboard we let all the tourists fight for spots on the bow while we avoided the masses and sat down in the back of the boat behind the cabin.  I've been on enough boats in thick fog to know that one gets soaked riding at the bow...  The boat ride was very enjoyable from the stern and we stopped to see a large pod of dolphins and another time to see a Minke whale.

We arrived at the island and unloaded, the resident ranger gave a quick talk about what not to do and we were off.  The first two hours of our walk was very fogged in, but it kept the temperatures at a reasonable level.  We hiked out of the island interior up to the cliffs on the coast and listened to the Sea Lions barking from below.  Since we couldn't see much of anything we sat down and caught up on some reading, hoping the fog would disipate.

Santa Cruz was very similar to Monhegan Island in Maine.  The high rocky cliffs, the very different micro climates throughout the island and all around is nothing but the ocean.  We walked the cliffs for the rest of the morning and finally just before lunch the sun started to break through the fog and we got some decent views of our surroundings.

We headed back down to the picnic area for some beef jerky and trial mix.  I found the most interesting part of the island right next to the picnic tables actually.  Since everything that comes to the island has to be brought by boat, and removal requires the same, all of the original farm equipment is still on the island.  It has all been moved to the main visitors area and a brief description has been written about each item.  Since the islands have been populated by "westerners" since the early 1900s there were all sorts of cool stuff.

Two tractors, both from the 1910s, were mostly intact.  Old cement mixers, hay bailers, homemade saw mills were just some of the equipment slowly rusting into the landscape.  The details of how each was used were included in the descriptions including how well, or not well, the men working on the farm favored the particular piece...  It was interesting stuff.

After lunch we once again climbed out of the interior to the opposite side of the harbor and found a nice place to sit and enjoy the sun while we waited for our ride.

Once back on the mainland we poached a parking spot at a sketchy motel for the night.  In the morning we headed up the coast on 101.

The Rest Of The Story

So I stopped writing again, no surprise there.  I'll continue on the story and catch you guys up to what is going on here in Tacoma, WA.

The next day we headed to the pick up spot for the river trip.  The driver who picked us up was friendly and knowledgeable if a little unconventional.  He drove us down to the base of the Hoover Dam and we put our rental canoe in the water and got out of the area as quickly as possible to avoid the rest of the tourons...

The trip was only about a total of 12 miles but it was relaxing, slow moving and had spectacular scenery.  The days were incredible with temps in the 90s on the river and in the 70s in the various side canyons that we explored by foot.  There were numerous hot springs along the trails, all of which looked a little on the overused side for us.  Most of them were barricaded in with bags of sand to make them deeper, which gave them a very dirty feel...  I'm sure they were fine but just not my thing.  Also every hot spring in the world, and much of the worlds stagnant water, contains a certain type of amoeba called Naegleria Fowleri.  This amoeba can enter the body through the nasal cavity and attach itself inside the nasal passage.  Once inside it migrates up through the sinuses and eventually finds it way into your brain... then you die...  So I decided that a dip in a dirty hot spring was not worth even a small percent chance that I would die.

We camped at the mouth of a side canyon that night and enjoyed dusk as the temperatures dropped down to more manageable levels.  In the morning as we were cooking breakfast we heard a clatter from across the river and notice a herd of Big Horn Sheep coming down to the water.  The sheep were walking down nearly vertical rock like it was a staircase.

They stopped to drink long enough for us to get some shots from across the river but you could tell they were aware of our presence and on alert.  After they were finished drinking they scrambled back up the canyon walls.  At one point they literally jumped and ran up what appeared to be a 15 ft cliff.  It was a sight to behold.

The second day was much like the first.  Hot, breezy and lazy.  It was really nice to be in a canoe again just meandering along without much of a timeframe.  We arrived at the takeout around 2pm and our pickup wasn't scheduled to arrive until 3pm.  So we walked up to the corner store and bought a six pack of beer and some party mix and enjoyed the rest of our afternoon from underneath a shade tree.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot this picture...

It was windy and I was doing my Michael Jackson impression... priceless.