Tour de Smithies: Olympia Style

Posted on September 28, 2013 by bottlingmoonlight | 2 Comments

Sarah and Me in Olympia

The Boys! Elliot, Emerson, and Van

Rolling into Olympia, Washington, we continued our pattern of staying with friends from my days at Smith College. Anyone who knows me even slightly knows how much I absolutely loved Smith and how much I love my friends from Smith. Apparently, the love doesn’t go one way. Our incredibly generous friends Sarah and Scott (and their lovely and energetic sons, Emerson and Elliot) invited us to stay for an extended period. They hosted us for a record eight nights. Yes, you read that right – EIGHT nights! They should be sainted.

Love these peeps!

It was so incredibly wonderful to have a bed to sleep in, a shower to use, access to laundry facilities, and to not have to worry about the weather. But more than that, Sarah and Scott are a walking party. Literally. We haven’t socialized that much since…I can’t even remember! We attended a total of four parties that week – and Sarah and Scott attended two additional parties (for a wedding) – so we were seriously not keeping up. It was such a fantastic change of pace. But, even better, I got to spend some excellent quality time with a wonderful friend who I haven’t seen in ages and her equally awesome husband. And Van had the chance to play with the big boys and all of their exciting toys. I think he was most excited by having a table to sit at that was just his size. Mental note for when we no longer live out of a tent.

Festivities in Olympia

Between the parties, we had the chance to check out a bunch of different places in the area. We hit up the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge and the Farmers’ Market with our friends, and when they were busy at work, we headed to Gig Harbor, Bremerton, Bainbridge Island, the Bainbridge Island Japanese-American Exclusion Memorial, the Foulweather Bluff Preserve at the northern end of the Kitsap Peninsula, and the Olympia Hands-On Children’s Museum.

Gig Harbor

Foulweather Bluff Preserve

Olympia

Japanese-American Exclusion Memorial

We also spent a day in Seattle exploring and were lucky enough to meet up with Sarah in the afternoon so she could show us around. On our very last day in Olympia, Sarah, Scott, and the boys accompanied us Staircase in Olympic National Park. We took our second hike of the trip with friends (the first with another Smithie and her son, Rebekah and Rhyer), and had our very first campsite visitors. So fun! It reminded me just how great it is to camp with friends. Something I hope to do lots of in the future. Any takers?!?!

Note the bench we found on our hike – we joked that it was a casualty of the sequester.

Bench in Staircase, Olympic National Park

Thank you Scott, Sarah, Emerson, and Elliot for an absolutely wonderful week. We miss you all already. Please come visit wherever we wind up settling down!!!

Van and Elliot

The Lonely Road

Posted on September 3, 2013 by bottlingmoonlight | Leave a comment

Life on the road can be exciting and full of adventure, but it’s not without its challenges. For me, the most difficult part of living out of an ever-moving car is not having friends nearby on a regular basis. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to spend so much time with Alan and Van, but this trip has reconfirmed the importance of seeing good friends on a regular basis. It was with this in mind that I eagerly accepted a dinner invitation from a Bottling Moonlight reader in Twin Falls, Idaho whom I had never met. She and her family instantly made us feel at home and treated us to a delicious breakfast for dinner (one of my faves) and access to laundry machines that don’t require quarters.

I hope to be as awesome as Cheri and Tom once we settle down somewhere and invite travelers to take a break, eat a home cooked meal, and enjoy a little relaxation with us. Not only would it be great to meet new friends, but it would expose Van to a diversity of people that he many not come across regularly in his ordinary life. Cheri and Tom’s two daughters are regularly exposed to interesting people from all over the world and it shows. Tom is a BASE jumping instructor and his students are often invited for dinner (check out his school, the Snake River BASE Academy). I was really impressed with the girls’ ability to converse with adults, in addition to their immediate desire to take Van under their wing and show him all the cool things in the neighborhood.

Thank you so much for your kindness, generosity, and hospitality, Cheri, Tom, Anna Grace, and Olivia! We hope to see you again – this time at our dinner table.

Me, Alan, Van, Cheri, Olivia, Anna Grace, and Tom

Tom (BASE jumping student), Alan, Van, Cheri, Olivia, Anna Grace, and Tom

The Snake River Valley

A Base Jumper after Jumping from the Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho

The Perrine Bridge with a BASE Jumper (if you squint)

Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls, Idaho

From the Mountains to the Semi-Desert

Posted on July 10, 2013 by bottlingmoonlight | 1 Comment

The only thing that made me excited to leave Rocky Mountain National Park was our plans to visit our friends in the Breckenridge area (Silverthorne to be exact). We had seen Rebekah and her son Rhyer this past Thanksgiving, but before that she and I had not seen each other since college! Even though it had been so long since we’d spent any meaningful time together, within minutes it felt as if no time had passed. Those are the best kinds of friendships! Van had a blast playing with Rhyer. He basically became a parrot, mimicking everything that Rhyer (who is a couple of years older) would do. This was a huge benefit when it came to eating. Van was keen to skip breakfast so that he could get extra time with the toys, but after seeing Rhyer eating a nectarine, it took no convincing to get Van to follow suit. Healthy eating for the win!

On our first afternoon with Rebekah, we headed up to the nearby town of Leadville, which just so happens to be the highest incorporated town in the country. As we were wandering around town and checking out her old stomping grounds, she thought it’d be a treat for Van to see the fire station. Since she knows several of the local firefighters, we were able to take Van on a grand tour of all of the fire and rescue trucks. And these are no ordinary fire trucks. These firefighters cover a huge, mountainous area and face building as well as forest fires. Their trucks were massive! We finished the day feeding fish at the fish hatchery, grabbing a great dinner in Leadville, and staying up late and chatting over glasses of wine. A perfect day!

Downtown Leadville

Manning the Leadville firetrucks

The next morning, Rebekah and Rhyer took us to Cataract Lake, a fantastic hiking spot in the Eagles Nest Wilderness Area. It was a perfect hike for kids – not too difficult but not too easy. Van wound up walking about half of it and being carried the rest of the way on Alan’s back. The hike was around a lake and to an impressive waterfall with a small wooden bridge over the rushing water. The views were insane (no filters or adjustments of the photos below – it was that beautiful), but the coolest part was how the trail passed through several different types of environments. The number of changes in scenery, plant life, smells, and colors were pretty remarkable for a trail less than three miles long. This would be the kind of trail you could keep coming back to during different seasons and not get bored.

Hiking with Rhyer and Rebekah

Aspens

Cataract Lake

After an afternoon and evening of more fun, great food, and even better conversation, we woke up and struck out for Breckenridge. We spent the morning wandering around, eating crepes, and stocking up on food for the next few days before saying our goodbyes. THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING REBEKAH AND RHYER!!!

We continued westward, headed for Colorado National Monument. We decided to overshoot the park and first check out Rabbit Valley, a beautiful and completely deserted area along the Utah border. We could have camped there for free, but we decided to opt for a campground with water where we wouldn’t be so far away from anyone else. We made our way to Colorado National Monument and set up camp for the next couple of days in a beautiful spot up on a cliff overlooking the town of Fruita.

Rabbit Valley, near the Colorado/Utah border

Colorado National Monument

Now that we are out of the mountains and into the semi-desert, the weather has changed dramatically. The sun had us up and out of the tent by 6am and on the hiking trails by 7. We were able to get some beautiful hikes in each day before it got too hot, and then proceeded to do some exploration by car in the middle of the day with stops for water play and ice cream in Grand Junction and a shaded picnic in Palisade. Across the valley from CNM were the Book Cliffs, so named because the edges of the buttes appear similar to a shelf of books. Though they lacked the punch of the rock formations in Colorado National Monument, I found them strange, beautiful, and all the more compelling.

Exploring

Posing

The Book Cliffs

We capped off our trip with an afternoon wandering around and picnicking in Glenwood Springs on our way back to the Denver area. We also swung through Carbondale during Van’s nap and vowed to come back and check it out again when we’d have time to explore. I was instantly taken by how it was situated, between towering mountains still covered in snow in one direction and red rock cliffs in another. Those are views I could get used to!

Daytrippin’

Posted on June 25, 2013 by bottlingmoonlight | Leave a comment

For any of you counting, we’ve been in Colorado now for just over a month. Much of that time we’ve spent with Alan’s family just south of Denver. This has been an enormous help to us, as well as a lot of fun! The first of couple weeks here gave us time to deal with our Eurovan, which we physically parted with on the side of the road in Memphis but didn’t legally part with until several weeks later. We also used this time to figure out how we were going to travel going forward and re-equip, which mostly consisted of taking a very critical eye to everything we had previously been traveling with. In our down time (meaning nap time for the little guy and in the evenings after he hits the hay) we’ve been reading travel books like crazy for the next part of our trip. We had previously only researched in detail places we were planning to visit before arriving in Colorado. Since we skipped a few states (that we hope to circle back to), we’re now faced with doing research for the next few states we plan to visit (Utah, Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon, California).

In addition to dealing with logistics, we’ve taken a couple of camping trips in our other (and now only) car to test out our pared down system. But, for the most part, we’ve been enjoying time with family and friends and taking day-trips around the area. We’ve been busy taking multiple trips to the mountains, exploring Denver museums and the zoo, poking around the Boulder Creek Festival in Alan’s former stomping grounds, frequenting the neighborhood pool, playgrounds, and trails that run right near our home, celebrating a milestone birthday with one of our dear friends (complete with belly dancer), and having (what has become a tradition during our visits to Colorado) a fabulous homemade Persian feast cooked by our birthday-celebrating friend’s wonderful parents. I’ve also had the chance to catch up with old friends, one of whom I haven’t seen in at least twenty years, and spend much more time getting to know Alan’s wonderful family. Watching Van interact with his grandparents and his Auntie Laura is definitely one of the highlights of our time in Colorado. Van asks for each of them by name every morning. He’s going to be in for a rude surprise when we can’t simply respond with assuring words that they’re right downstairs or that he’ll see them in a few days.