Category: Life & Miscellany
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Sometimes, vacations take you.
All this talk of stolen vacations, and all I had to do was wait another week. Well, maybe not for a vacation, per se, but certainly a change of scenery. My mother called to let me know that my grandfather, who lived in Exeter, NH, was entering hospice care. Before I knew it, I was…
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Volcano vacation
The second part of my little stolen holiday was a little more ambitious: a four-night camping trip with the Tailor in southern Oregon. It was just what the doctor ordered—the perfect prescription for recharging the soul. We camped in the Rogue River National Forest, in a grove of hemlocks and blooming dogwoods, just downstream from…
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Summer finally got the memo
Well, if this isn’t a case of “be careful what you wish for,” I don’t know what is. Though for the record, I’m pretty sure I was the only person in the entire Pacific Northwest who wasn’t doing any wishing. (I like the cold.) Monday it was a sweater-perfect 65 degrees; today it scorched out…
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Independence party
This is Carol, a fiery Sicilian kindred spirit and one of my favorite-est people on the planet. She and her fabulous husband, Jeff, hosted a Fourth of July shindig in their garden today, threats of rain and cold, dreary weather be darned. There was a little music, a healthy dose of croquet, (with the added…
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Pinnipeds on parade
When I have the time to take the long way to Seattle, I like to take the back road that skirts the water. The other day I stopped and got out at an overlook at Browns Point to snap this photo—until a weird sound distracted me from the scenery. It sounded like something rusty and…
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Blissberries
If I ran the world, there would be a national holiday to celebrate the first strawberries and cream of the season. This is worth the closing of stores, school cancellations, paid vacation time. I would send greeting cards for this. Happy Berry Day!
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Goonies never say die!
The Tailor and I had some errands to run in Portland yesterday, and since the the rain that has been pounding us for two weeks was finally starting to give way to sun, we decided to take the long way home, along the winding coastal road. We stopped for clam chowder in Astoria, Oregon—a historic…
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Time travel day trip
Today was just begging for a Sunday drive, Mother’s Day crowds be darned, so the Tailor and I moseyed up to another of my favorite haunts: Port Townsend. Port Townsend is located on the northeastern tip of the Olympic Peninsula (close on a map to but in reality very far from Cape Flattery) and guards…
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Paper petals
Normally I’m an autumn kind of gal, but I have to say that spring might just be the best season in the Northwest. There’s something spectacular around every corner.
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Low tide
For the most part, Puget Sound is extremely deep, and lined with narrow, rocky beaches, with steep drop-offs and underwater cliffs. But Dash Point is one place where, at low tide, you can walk a long, long way out on a pristine sandbar. I love the feeling of standing out in the middle of a…