orcas island love

this is a fine sunday morning. my whole life sundays have been the one day a week that my busy family takes off. while i worked in santa cruz, i only really ever got one day off a week, if that, and i fiercely protected my sundays. they are made for resting, re-setting, eating big meals with your friends and family, slowing down, noticing things.
one thing i noticed while we camped on orcas island is that i do not like to camp near anyone else. i do not want my campsite to look out on anyone or anything man made. i get this from my dad, who (like me on orcas) will drive around until he finds the perfect hidden campsite. while we were living in mammoth, my dad told me that my grandpa used to be the exact same way when he was a kid, making them hike farther out if they were backpacking and saw another human.
i like that i am picky like my dad and my grandpa. i like being alone in the nature! fortunately todd is (for the most part) willing to put up with me pulling into a campsite, walking around, trying out the views, leaving, pulling into a new one and starting the process over.
do you know the story of puget sound? how a glacier a mile thick tore through the area and over 6000 years created all these inlets and islands? orcas is in the san juan islands at the top of washington's puget sound. it is a sleepy fishing island that somehow happened to get a world class skatepark that todd got to skate everyday, pretty much by himself.


the last day we were there, todd was skating the park with this little boy, probably about 10 i would guess. he had a packed lunch, you could tell his parents dropped him off at the park in the morning on the way to work. he kept asking todd how to do tricks, showing him these giant ants, offering him tic tacs. he was lonely and wanted a friend.
as we left todd gave him his skateboard. it was the best feeling i have had in a long time, watching this little kid be stoked beyond belief by todd.



magic. the pacific northwest is magic.
one ferry ride and an hour later in the car, we were at the border.
well hello canada! nice to meet you eh!

ports, ferries, islands

port townsend is at the northernmost tip of the olympic peninsula.

like most towns on the coast of the pacific northwest, it is a port town.




and what gem did we find just across a bridge? poulsbo, the scandanavian village on the bay!





bainbridge island. a 30 minute ferry from seattle. total magic.
we camped on the beach and read until 9pm. summer solstice buddies!

seattle has a space needle.
and then. . . a port town! anacortes, the gate to the san juan islands at the top of puget sound. and a ferry ride!!!!

we could get used to commuting via ferry. it is the most efficient method of public transport, and full of views and fresh air.

the ultimate catch up

it has only been about a week, but it has been a lifetime, two states, an island, and a new country. we have been on ferries, bridges, chair lifts, trails, kayaks. we keep being reminded of the scope of this trip, when we spend hours in the car but only move a few inches on the map.

so when we last saw each other, we were leaving oregon. well hello washington. we drove around the olympic peninsula into the olympic national forest.
it is not yet summer in washington.

there are hot springs in the olympic forest, and you know we found them.
sol duc hot springs. totally in the middle of nowhere.

sol duc waterfalls. pretty no? the olympic national forest gets about 14 feet of rain a year, which is why everything is insanely green and there is so much water everywhere.
also they get snow.







and that is just part one.

Empty Fossil Of The New Scene

i was in the shower in seattle two days ago when out of nowhere, i started to feel so exhausted. i thought to myself that it would be nice to go home for a few days, to some familiarity. that is when i realized that we do not have a home. we don't have a house, or even a town that we ally ourselves with above any others. everything we own is spread between my brother's attic, a storage unit in santa cruz, and my honda. this is the plan, and all is going smoothly according to it. our rules on this trip are that we do whatever we want, we don't stick to any agenda, and if we like someplace, we can stay and enjoy it.

seattle is a neat city, there is so much going on that we are both into - amazing coffee, skateboarding, ferry boats. . . but it was also unbelievably annoying too. muggy, full of tourists, no place to stay. it was the first time on our trip so far that we hit that point. the point where all that sounds good is familiarity. knowing where you can go and have some food or get a beer without the exploring part. when you are in your hometown, or even in a town that you know, you have a way of navigating it, making it part of you. your coffee shop, your street you walk home on, your post office, your bar, your view. it is the compass that helps you figure out who you know who you are. a new place every day or so means that nothing is familiar, and this is awesome. it has been a totally mind bending experience.
it would be easy to fall back on becoming a tourist in these places. go to the spots, take the pictures, eat in the applebees. but that isn't what we are like in our hometowns, that isn't how i navigate through space.
after 2 hours of frustratingly walking through gross bar filled neighborhoods while trying to find something to eat, we ended up finding a restaurant/bar called linda's tavern that was familiar. we ate grilled cheese and drank some beer, and felt like we had found a way to be part of seattle a little bit, instead of looking at it, snapping pictures of it. while we were there, somebody even put some alice in chains on the jukebox.