sea stacks, driftwood, mountains, and spits

hello from washington!

we just returned from rialto beach. (thank you to the washington natives who told us to go there!) i think it might be one of the most beautiful places i've ever been. the pictures probably don't capture it fully, but i guess they never really do. in this one, you can see the water and some driftwood and a little sea stack off in the distance.


[hello! this is sam. i am interjecting. i hate to interrupt, but i feel that some explanation is in order. raise your hand if you were just now thinking, "what the heck is a sea stack?" right - me too! okay, so a sea stack is a little island that's close to the shore. they are cool.

...also, rialto beach is a scene of destruction - enormously powerful storms and tsunamis hit it all the time, so the outer edge of the forest is continually being dessicated by salt spray, knocked over by wind and waves, and eventually swallowed by the sea. so you either walk on the pebbles and risk getting drenched when a big wave comes, or you climb around over a swath of petrifying trees and driftwood, or you find a path through the spooky forest.]

we had a lot of fun exploring. sam loved the crashing waves and the different sounds they made as they came towards us and then receded over the rocks. i collected stones but then realized i was not allowed to keep them. though i saw other people leaving with theirs, i have this thing about following rules. so, i left mine on a big fallen tree.


i wasn't the only one who made a rock arrangement!

[sam says: look at the size of that tree! or i guess there's no scale... so, just trust me, it was ginormous.]


we loved looking at all the driftwood. sam found this swirly one.


here i am looking thoughtful.


here is sam looking like a spiky tree.


a few days ago, we went to the dungeness spit, which also had fallen trees and driftwood and nice rocks but was much more calm. [sam: it's where the crabs come from!] i love spits because they are called spits. this one was seven miles long! here, sam models some driftwood.


[so probably everyone already knew this except me, but a spit is just a little tiny peninsula. practically a sandbar, except attached to the mainland. the dungeness spit is only a few dozen yards wide in places. maybe it's the longest in the world? or one of the longest? there was a sign but i can't remember.]

a nice man took our picture for us.


after camping for two nights near the spit, we drove to hurricane ridge in olympic national park. once we got to the top, we got out of the car and hiked a little to the top of hurricane hill. here's the hill.


here's the view of the mountains from the hill, with some crazy people trying to get in the way.


tomorrow we're planning to get rained on in the rainforest. we hope you are all staying dry where you are. we love and miss you.

Family Times is Fun Times

Dear Internet,

We owe you an apology for not keeping up with our bloggily duties. But life here in the Emerald City just whizzes (pleasantly) by.

We rejoin our befuddled wanderers as they putter around Bellingham, Washington, a cute little seaside town near the Canadian border. The days pass peacefully, whiled away in bookstores and donut shops - there's also a certain amount of blackberry picking going on, since blackberries grow wild around here and are delicious.

Then we camped on Lopez Island in Puget Sound. The campsite was, like, amazing! They had hammocks,


and sheep,


and everything! Abbie bonded with the sheep, particularly the one in the front there. Now she's bonded with both bison and sheep. I'm thinking pretty much any large vegetarian mammal that's willing to get close to her is a contender. Maybe doesn't even have to be a mammal. We'll keep you posted.

She also bonded with the sea lions that live on (or near) the island, even though they didn't come right up to us or anything. We just watched them lying around in the sun, until we eventually realized they were setting a pretty good example, which we then followed. (If you click on this picture, you'll have a better chance of making them out.)





Although we loved our Lopez Island campsite, with its many amenities (including hot showers, and a fireplace in the picnic area), we eventually succumbed to Seattle's siren song. We filled a sack with giant island cinnamon rolls and hopped the ferry.

We received a royal welcome from Abbie's aunt Bobbie and cousins Anna and Emilie. We only planned to stay a few nights, but for the past week (is it really a week?), we have basically just lived it up, farmers'-market-style, and long-late-dinner-with-deep-conversation-style. Also we watched Ratatouille one night and some amazing family home videos (Abbie forbids me to describe the home videos here - ask me later).

Here's some of that conversation - apparently I am saying something at first amusing and then rather shocking. (Thanks to Bobbie for these photos.)



We got to see a lot of Steve and even a fair amount of his delightful sons, Michael and Nick. Here's one of all of us (except Emilie) from Anna's world championship tournament.


One night was Nick's birthday, and I made my mom's chocolate sheet cake. Bobbie was nice about what I did to her kitchen.


We did a pretty good job with that sheet cake.


Bobbie's porch has a hammock, too, so we hardly missed our campsite at all.


Here's the day that we decided to go be lazy at the park instead of being lazy at the house.


Ruby got a lot of swimming done while we ate a picnic and played frisbee.


Just yesterday, my favorite mother-in-law arrived. She had been in Portland and took the train up. I have no photos to prove it, but she did take this photo (I promise).


We are so grateful to Bobbie for letting us pretty much run her ragged with a lot of late-night carousing. It has been so lovely here. We are sad to go.

But the road awaits - we're heading west to the Olympic peninsula, and then we'll mosey down the coast, looking forward to reuniting with Gloria (and, we hope, Eddie) either on the coast or back in Portland. If all goes according to plan, we'll probably be in L. A. in a month.

We love you, and we miss you. Keep in touch.

over's over; down is now.

greetings, internet!

i'm writing to you from scenic bellingham, washington. since we last posted, we've wandered around a bit: first to astoria on the oregon coast with kevin, then up to vancouver to watch an ultimate (frisbee) tournament. we're glad to be back in the states if for no other reason than that our phones (and money) work here. we'll be moving slowly southward along the west coast from now until probably late october.

we set out from new orleans about two months ago now, with the general plan to go "up, over, down, and back." it's basically a rectangle with the corners in new orleans, michigan's upper peninsula, vancouver, and los angeles. so even though we aren't quite halfway through the trip in terms of time, we've turned the second corner. abbie told me she was thinking about this as she first stepped into the pacific on the oregon coast.


but i'm getting ahead of myself. we had a few more toothsome, succulent days with kevin. time does not permit my dwelling on each savory moment. but, as usual, abbie took lots of pictures of our madcap adventures. here we are having some fun at the lovely condo:


similar fun, different day:


if it seems like we spent a lot of time in the condo, don't be deceived. we wandered and explored. but it's also true that kevin introduced us to a word game called "word twist." i am purposely not linking to it because this game is extremely dangerous. many people very close to me are completely addicted. please monitor your children and spouses closely when they use the internet. anyone can become a victim. pay special attention to anyone who is experiencing symptoms of ASW (acute scrabulous withdrawal).

[note: if the preceding paragraph was mostly lost on you, do not feel ashamed. all this means is that you are not a huge nerd who spends too much time on the internet.]

anyway, here's another variation on the sam-and-kevin-have-fun theme, this time in a restaurant:


but we did more than just embody gluttony and sloth. we also visited a distillery! here i am, um, inspecting the dimensions of a beautiful copper still.


and here i am, victoriously clutching one of the last bottles of mccarthy's whiskey.


we continued to pursue self-improvement and ennoblement of our spirits by going to an arcade. abbie found it: it's called ground kontrol, and it has all the classics. plus they serve beer.



abbie has promised that a video of our flailing attempts at dance dance revolution is forthcoming. unfortunately i did not take any video of abbie's performance on the game q-bert. i cannot explain how good abbie is at q-bert. without obvious effort, she got a high score two factors of ten over her nearest competitor. she's like a different person... or a machine. never play her for money.

after all that asceticism, we decided to head for the beach. cannon beach is maybe pretty famous, but i had never heard of it. so imagine my shock and surprise when it turned out to be the beach from the goonies.

notice the distinctive rocks from the medallion part behind my goofy face. the big rock is called, i think, haystack rock.


it was also just a nice beach in general. the sand was soft and warm, and the water not as horrifyingly cold as it looked. there were cool wind-gnarled trees and more rocks and stuff.







by a magical coincidence, the house from the goonies was just a few miles up the road in astoria. we couldn't get too close because it's someone's house and everything. but it looked just like in the movie!

we were sad to leave the coast since it meant our time with kevin had drawn to a close. he has to go to law school.

we dropped him off at the airport in portland and then drove on up to vancouver. it was an unremarkable drive except for when abbie failed the customs interview at the canadian border. they asked her if she had pepper spray, and instead of just saying, "yes i do! we had no idea that pepper spray was considered a weapon and prohibited in canada! otherwise i certainly would have left it behind. how can i properly dispose of it, officer?" she panicked and just stepped on the gas and went right through the little gate thingy. can you believe it?

okay, so i embellished a little. she managed to resist the urge to floor it, and the canadian police people were very nice. probably as close as we'll ever get to feeling like bonnie and clyde.

then it was off to vancouver, where abbie's very talented cousin anna was playing on the u. s. team in the world championships of ultimate. if you've never heard of ultimate, it's worth checking out. this video is a good four-minute introduction if you're interested--although it doesn't fully convey how incredibly exciting a sport it is to watch. it's got all the athleticism and grace of soccer at about twice the speed - and with lots more diving and big plays. anna was a standout player and really fun to watch - and the u. s. team came back from four points down to take the bronze.


(anna's second from the left.)

we had a great visit with bobbie, steve, michael and nick, who very kindly let us crash in their hotel suite for two nights. we're looking forward to seeing them again when we go back through seattle.

one last thing: as we came back through the border (i was driving this time, and we were pretty sure we didn't have any more contraband, but we took some cleansing breaths anyway), the car next to us was stopped and surrounded by seven or eight customs officers, pistols drawn, who then cuffed the passenger and led him inside. we have no idea what happened and presumably never will but it was pretty wild.

what will happen next? will abbie lose her fear of animal attacks but develop a new fear of electrocution by small appliances? will sam finally lose it after abbie beats him at boggle for the tenth time in a row? or will they continue to putter peacefully along? tune in next week for the thrilling conclusion.

sam can see!

back in kansas city, sam went to see my family eye doctor, who was very nice, and who gave him a new prescription. he was excited, but until now, we haven't been in any one city long enough to get the prescription filled. so, below, sam models some lovely new frames. can you guess which ones he chose? (actually, i had to choose, because sam couldn't see what he looked like. it was tempting to go with the harry potter ones, but then i thought: what would my mother-in-law do?)















we continue to have lots of fun with here in portland with kevin. more soon! with video!