Joe Graduated: Disneyland!

This summer also saw to the end of my formal education! Yes, that’s right, I now have a M.Ed. in College Student Services Administration with a minor in Business Administration. Because I was a part time student (working full time) it took me a solid three years to complete my degree. While I wouldn’t have done it any other way (full time being the other option) I was definitely happy to be done with it! We celebrated the day with a ceremony with my cohort and a gathering back at our house. It was great to celebrate the day with family and friends. Perhaps the greatest part of being done with school was my graduation present from Kerry.

A few days before my actual graduation, Kerry let me know what was happening by giving me a pair of mouse ears, pre-embroidered with my name! (That’s right we were going to Disneyland) It is important to note that several weeks beforehand she had come to the conclusion that because we had been working so hard that we needed a break and that we should take a week off of work just to relax around the house. Of course I bought it hook, line, and sinker. So with my week off of work already scheduled, we were off to the happiest place on earth.

While the shuttle ride from LAX to the hotel was a little harrying (I’ve never seen somebody stand up as they drove…) We made it safely and were surprised to find that our hotel rooms had been upgraded to the executive level (with a great view of the park) and just for kicks they threw in a $100 gift card to use at the hotel restaurants (breakfast was taken care of!)

With the necessities taken care of, it was off to the park. There is a certain uplifting feeling that you get as soon as you walk out on to Main Street--the music, the people, the shops, and the general suggestion that everything is going to be just fine! Disneyland can get a bit overwhelming and we found that Main Street was a nice place to cool our heels and stroll along to the show tunes.

For both Kerry and me, it was our first time eating meals at the restaurants in the park. One meal in particular was quite thrilling—We got to eat IN Pirate’s of the Carribean! I still can’t believe it as I type it. There is a restaurant, The Blue Bayou that has its seating on a veranda in the middle of the ride. If you ever happen to find yourself on the ride, there is a point when the boat passes through a bayou, to your right is a terrace—that’s where we ate! While the trip was for my graduation, the dinner was also a pre-celebration of our fifth anniversary. We had a great time, saw some incredible shows, and relived the same magic that we felt when we went to Disneyland when we were younger. Thanks Kerry!

This was our very last night in the park. We were about to leave and then decided that it would be too much to leave without getting our picture with Mickey.

Yep! This is us eating in 'Pirates.'

I really thought I would be the one to lift it--never happened.

I think that Kerry probably got closer.

This was awesome to watch. It was the Jedi Training Academy. This is right as Darth Vader crashes the light saber lesson. One kid actually pulled out a Force push on him.

Mickey's marching band.

This is still one of my favorite rides--and I even fit! The rocket ships were a different story though.

We are some fine looking Mousketeers!

When we went to Disneyland we wore buttons that said "I'm celebrating my graduation / anniversary." This amazing cream filled doughnut was the result of said buttons. New Orleans Square: a good and filling place to eat.

This is me crouching down for my hood. The squat is because the hooder was quite a lot shorter than the hoodee.

We're going to Disneyland!

North Olympic Discovery Half Marathon

Joe and I did not start out as runners. I was quite an athlete most of my life, but let that go by the wayside in college. Joe did some sports, football and track, but ultimately opted for the drama path. After we were married and moved to Alaska we made sure to be more active to combat the effects of the dark dark winter, but whenever either of us mentioned running, the other would smash the idea without mercy. Neither of us wanted to start to run with the other. We were embarrassed.

I'm not quite sure how the transition happened, but finally, walking and the other things we were doing weren't cutting it for either of us, and we started running. It took awhile for it to be enjoyable, but we finally got there. Even then we thought people who ran long distances were crazy and never pictured ourselves training for a race. But, just like the idea that we would never run, that one was conquered as well.

Somehow we decided that we wanted to run a marathon. No, not a 5k, not a 10k, not a Turkey trot...a marathon...as our first race. So we set about to train for one. I can't even remember which one now. We went along our merry way doing that training and on a Monday after running 12 miles that weekend, we were out on a "short" run, which had now climbed to six miles and we looked at each other and realized that neither one of us was having fun any more. And what time would we have to get up on weekdays when our short runs climbed to 9 miles? We didn't even want to think about that. So we threw in the towel and declared ourselves the Mighty Masters of Moderation. Joe mentioned that a half marathon might be fun, but I poo-pooed the idea because I don't really want to run a half anything. I like to do wholes.

I can't remember how that declaration also became a notion of the past, but awhile ago we decided to run a half marathon. We trained a couple times and ended up injured, but this spring we trained again and selected a half marathon in the San Juan Islands on June 6th that was sure to be beautiful. As the day approached, we both felt a bit odd about the half we had chosen. We hadn't realized that with the ferry time it would be an 8 hour drive both ways. The race organization also seemed to be a bit on the not so stellar side. We had a fair amount of cash invested in the race though, but in a moment of rebellion I looked for other half marathons that weekend and found the North Olympic Discovery Marathon in Port Angeles. I was peeved that we had missed this before, but still sent it to Joe, thinking we would not be irresponsible enough to switch. However, there was another factor...our nephew Cameron was having a birthday in Shelton, which is on the way to Port Angeles, and the whole family was gathering there. So with that fact, our good luck in our hotel in Anacortes letting us off the hook, and a moment of self-indulgence, we were off to the races!

We traveled all the way to Port Angeles to pick up our packets on Saturday and back to hang out and spend the night in Shelton. The next morning we were up bright and early and headed back to Port Angeles.

The beginning of the race was well organized. We took a bus to the start and while we were waiting for the start and stretching, I ran into an old friend from college, Mary. I noticed her immediately and thought she looked a whole lot like my friend Mary, but since Mary's on the east coast I thought she was just a look alike. But all of a sudden I heard, "Kerry" and Mary was launching herself at me with her usual enthusiasm. It was so nice to see her. She was visiting to run the race with her sister. I was not smart enough to get a picture, but here are Joe and I pre-race.

Eventually we lined up at the start and off we went! The first few miles were through fields and were relatively flat and beautiful. Miles four through nine were more woodsy and passed through narrow creek beds that had huge down hill slopes followed with sharp inclines. Even in the most difficult areas, the scenery was so beautiful that it hardly mattered. It also helped that a friend had loaned me her watch and I was able to keep track of our time for the first time ever, and we were keeping a solid clip! We were much more motivated to run quickly when we could see the pay off on the watch. The aid stations were excellent and the volunteers were very enthusiastic. At the top of the biggest hill there was a drumming group and their constant beat made it much easier to climb the hill.

As we transitioned from the woods to the trail along the water, we crossed a few roads and at one a marimba band was playing! It was great! Just after the marimba band we hoped on a wood bridge with a corner. At the corner a spectator was letting runners know that the wood was slick. We were both very appreciative because we were pretty sure we'd be on our butts. At 9 miles we hit the water and it was gorgeous! At 7 miles we'd observed that we felt really strong and were quite pleased with that. At 9 miles we were still feeling excellent and even discussed how a marathon couldn't be that hard (remember those earlier notions that we later crushed? Yeah, this is one of those). At 10 miles we hit our "ouch" point. We had a few ouches. First, our thighs were dead. Second, despite the beauty of the water, the flat trail and constant scenery got a bit monotonous. Third, at mile 10 we could see the finish line. Usually that's a good thing, if you've got only a few hundred yards left. It is not so delightful when you have 3.1 miles left. But we pushed on, checked in with each other and generally had a good time despite the pain. At mile 12 I realized we weren't going to make our goal time of under 2 hours, but we both wanted to get close. I asked Joe if he had anything left to offer and he said no. I didn't have anything left either, but somehow we still managed to step it up enough to make our last mile our fastest. We crossed the finish line at 2:01:11 and felt amazing and victorious!

Volunteers handed us our medals and a FRS and told us something, but I don't know what it was. I was a bit out of it. We were incredibly grateful that there were volunteers to take our timing chips off. There was no way we could make the dive to our shoes. Our next stop was bag pick up where they had pulled our bags when we crossed the finish line and had them ready for us. After walking a bit to get our senses back, we lined up for the goodies! The pretzels, orange slices, and muffins were wonderful, but nothing was quite so wonderful as the warm chicken soup. Two sweatshirts, a few photos, a hug for Mary and we were on our way back to Shelton to celebrate with Cameron.

It was an excellent experience and we really enjoyed training together. It was just the right challenge without taking over our entire lives and we felt incredibly accomplished. We're running another one soon and have our sights set on a few more nearby and a few exciting ones further away.

Spring

It has certainly been a busy Spring and I only wish we had more pictures of our happenings. As we’ve found that we need to get better about blogging we’ve also found that we need to step up our photo documentation. We’ll get there!

For me I suppose that one of the highlights of this spring was my birthday. I felt well-celebrated with multiple days and multiple people! A few days before my actual day, Kerry arranged a trip to OMSI After Dark. For those of you who love going to museums that traditionally attract children and are always annoyed that they’re constantly in your way, this is the event for you! Basically the last Wednesday of each month, OMSI opens up to the 21+ crowd. With a decent selection of wine and beer all of us kids at heart get to generate electricity, launch rockets, learn about sewer systems, and find out just how color blind we really are.

It was a great evening that started out with a trip to the Rock Bottom Brewery in Portland. It was a fantastic meal--the company was superb--and with the purchase of a new pub glass, I think that I have officially started a collection of some sort. The other thing that came out of this birthday, was a new project! I do love projects. This one brought new landscape lighting to our backyard and some very comfy hammock chairs that Kerry saw me pining after at the State Fair--that is the place to pine!

Other celebrations included a trip to the coast with the Weeks crew for their birthday; a trip to the beautiful King Estate’s Winery for Kerry’s dad’s birthday; a trip to Puyallup for birthday celebrations for my dad, brother-in-law, and me; a baby shower for our friends Megan & Steve; a weekend in Portland for my sister’s graduation; and sending some flowers up to our dear friend Abbey to celebrate her graduation. Whew!

On a less-than-celebratory note, our friend Neil (from Alaska), was deployed to Bagram AFB in Afghanistan where he will be for the next few months flying MC-12s. It definitely brings our presence over there closer to home and are excited for his return.

On to the work world! Kerry’s 19-week healthy challenge program, PowerUp has finally come to a close. It was an event that took a ton of coordination, time, and effort, but really made a huge difference for the participants. Kerry has also finished up a TON of other things this spring. You may have read in our previous post that she finished her ombuds training in Baltimore. As of this last week she has also finished her Health Coach training through Well Coaches.

In my sphere, my work with the construction of our new residence hall on campus is winding down somewhat now that we are pretty much done designing it. For those construction nerds out there, we have a live webcam setup at the construction site.

From here on out Kerry and I are stoked about the upcoming summer and the mixture of rest and adventure it will bring. Kerry’s started quite the garden on the balcony outside of our bedroom. While the tomatoes have been hating our recent weather, the climbing-peas have been going absolutely crazy! It’s a pretty complete garden with tomatoes, spinach, melons, eggplants, peas, a pumpkin, mint, basil, oregano, and peppers. If the weather cooperates we should have quite the salad!

Fall & Winter

Happy Pumpkin Patching!

It has certainly been an eventful past few months. I have seriously neglected my duties as co-blogger and am just now getting to my posts--a trip to the pumpkin patch, yes for Halloween, and our recent trip to Willamette Pass for some Nordic skiing.

This was our third trip to the pumpkin patch. As you'll see in previous posts, what makes this particular place so great is that they tow all of the pumpkin-patch goers out to the fields on a hay cart, using a tractor that the owners have proudly kept running since 1965. What made this particular trip even more fantastic is that this year the tractor driver recruited 20-something-year-olds to drive the tractor with him and not just the 12-and-unders. Here is Kerry on the John Deere.

Each pumpkin that auditions for the role of Kerry's jack-o-lantern must be carefully evaluated on carving potential. Watching the deliberation is perhaps one of my favorite things about walking the patch. Not just any pumpkin will do and indeed what seems like the entire patch must be searched before the finalists are chosen.

The perfect pumpkin may lurking right under your feet...

Yes! We have a possibility!

Usually Kerry doesn't go for the big pumpkins, but you never know which one will call to you.

Or which four pumpkins will call to you...

Now, each one must be carefully evaluated on the basis of personality, carvability, color, and that certain, je ne sais quoi.

Joe on the other hand takes the approach of deprecating each potential candidate to weed out the weak and unworthy.

In the end it was the big one that won...or lost...depending on your point of view I suppose.

We had some great carving fun on the kitchen floor with some hot cider and aebelskivers--there may have been a slight grease fire involved, but I'm not sure. We also came home with a sugar pumpkin which we turned into the same stuff you get out of the can. It was pretty darn good.

We've made this such a great tradition that I look forward to it every year. It's fun to be the 20-something-year-olds who enjoy hunting pumpkins as much as the 5-year-olds.

Our other fun adventure was a trip up to Willamette Pass for some Nordic skiing with our friends Ben and Gail. While the conditions were not great--thanks to The Nino--it was still a great time and made us realize how much we miss this part of living in Alaska.

Here we are in the parking lot getting ready to ski--or at least to walk to the ski shop to get our skis.

Here's Kerry busting some mean Nordic moves on the trails. All right in all honesty, the conditions were such that nobody was busting moves of any kind. Here's Kerry posing in her snazzy new snow pants that are actually long enough--it's been a long, long journey.

There seemed to be a lot of "uphilling" both ways. When it came time to reap the reward of a long hill climb with an exhilarating downhill run, the snow seemed to get sticky.

Despite the less-than-ideal conditions we had a great time getting a great workout, grubbing on some PB&J at the top of the trails, and sharing something that Kerry and I love with our friends. Of all the adventures and new things that we've tried together, I think that this is by far one of my favorites. Hopefully we'll get to do this more next year!

Road Trip!

This September, the end of our summer, Joe and I took a road trip and it was fabulous. We headed east through Oregon and Idaho, stopped in Jackson, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, drove over the Bear Tooth Pass into Red Lodge, hit up Billings, Bozeman, Helena, and Missoula, cruised through Spokane, ate in Walla Walla, and came to a screeching halt in our own comfy bed.

We keep a running list of places that we want to go together, and this trip was an opportunity to get to some of those places. We intended for the trip to be relaxing, an adventure, and to be an opportunity to check out some towns we were considering as potential final destinations. Don't worry, we're not planning on heading out just yet, nor are we sure of where we'll go or if we'll even leave.

The first two days of our vacation were almost entirely driving. Luckily we'd taken a wise risk at the state fair and bought two lower back support devices for the car. We've tried this before and found that we'd mostly thrown our money away. That was not the case this time! We were almost entirely pain free. I had forgotten how incredibly beautiful Eastern Oregon is. I think it's often thought of as flat and endless, which indeed it is in some places, but we were constantly impressed by then landscape ahead of us.

We made a brief stop at John Day Fossil Beds. It was brief largely because we drove right by it the first time. A heads up for those of you hoping to visit the fossil beds: They are not in John Day. You must turn left as you enter an enormous canyon. We assumed the beds were in John Day, being the John Day fossil beds, and we both missed the sign because while the canyon is beautiful, it takes some concentrated driving efforts to navigate. It's not hard, just the sort of place where you don't want to mess up. We turned back and found the fossil beds. I must say I think we were both disappointed. Not because it was unimpressive, more because we had the wrong impression. It was odd that the fossils were behind glass. We thought it might be more interactive. I also thought that the fossils would be pretty. You know, leaves, pretty little fish bones? No, these were big tortoise shells and enormouse jaws of things long gone. At least it satisfied our curiosity.

We had planned to stay in an Oregon state park that night, but we were feeling adventurous and energetic. It made sense to reduce our driving the second day by driving the first day while we still had energy. That choice also gave us more time in Jasper and the Grand Tetons. It also meant we had to find a new place to camp. Easy right? Um... A few hours from the Oregon border I started researching places to stay just outside of Boise. Mountain Home became our destination. There was an RV park that would take us. Now don't turn up your noses; there's no reason not to stay at an RV park if you're just heading through. Actually, they can be kind of plush with bathrooms and clean showers to boot. We pulled into Mountain Home at about midnight. The kind woman who had answered the phone when I called said we could just pull in next to the pump house and pay in the morning. Excellent! We drove through a charming area of Mountain Home, into a slightly less charming area, and then into an area where shops featured bars over the windows. Hmm. A few blocks later we found RV park, which was actually a trailer park, and a highly sketchy trailer park at that. It's just weird to pull into a neighborhood and set up camp, especially when you feel like you should have your thickest shoes on to prevent being stabbed by used needles. Now, it may not have been that bad, but since neither of us were willing to get out of the car, we figured we shouldn't go to sleep with only a thin layer of nylon separating us from whoever was passing by. Luckily, we had passed a sign for a KOA on our way into town. We turned back, hoping desparately to find refuge in the KOA. Now let me tell you, I am now a huge fan of KOAs. Not only was it clean, they had a night check-in system, coded bathrooms, granite countertops (seriously), mold free showers, and a flat place to pitch our tent. Joe was not as big a fan; in fact he was down right disturbed to be camping with a "K". He wasn't a fan of the park-like feel of the camping area that made it anything but private. He also thought it was weird that there were homes around the actual camp ground. However, when I explained that it really was camping with a "K" and that if what you needed was a safe and clean place to stay in the middle of the night, kamping was just right. I grabbed a KOA map and felt secure in the fact that wherever we went, we'd never be too far from kamping.

We took off the next morning and made our way to Grand Teton National Park. The drive was fairly uneventful, but you should see the speed limits in Idaho! It was also prettier than I remembered it being, though the scenery didn't make my heart sing. Also, google maps let us down. Luckily our own ingenuity pulled us through.

We set up camp and went for a walk around a lake near our campground. It was gorgeous. The sun was setting, the lake was calm, and the mountains were as beautiful as ever. We headed back to camp, had dinner, and conked out. The next day we drove south through the park, stopped at every turn out, took tons of pictures, and ended up at the Jackson Hole tram that goes up the mountain. Beautiful. We spent the rest of the day checking out Jackson and headed to Yellowstone that evening.

Our first order of business in Yellowstone was setting up camp. After only two nights of tent sleeping, I was sporting bruises on my pelvis, despite our luxury version thermarests. No backpacking light stuff for us; we like to be comfortable. However, I wasn't. While Joe checked us in to our second site (the first one was too far away from bathrooms and people for me--I'm not a big fan of bears) I cruised to the Yellowstone general store and bought another set of camping pads. No, I'm not ashamed to admit it. We were both much happier, more comfortable, and less purple. That night we had an amazing dinner of bison, asparagus, garlic mashed potatoes, decadent desserts, amazing appetizers, and good cocktails at the Yellowstone Lake Inn. The sun was setting over the lake, and it was just spectacular.

Both mornings in Yellowstone we got up, drove to the showers (a good distance away) and I got to walk back to Joe making me breakfast. Those walks were pleasant and there's nothing like rounding the corner into your campsite as your husband dishes up eggs. I am spoiled rotten.

I should add here that our first few mornings of camping were frustrating. When you have to unload and load your car every time you eat, change, anything, things get slow and tedious. We had to do this because of bears. In Oregon you just leave your crap out wherever, not so much in Yellowstone. It was also taking us ages to get out of camp and it took us until our last day camping to think, "well duh, let's get some cereal and pour milk over it. We don't have to have a hot breakfast every morning." Yeah, we're smart. I did enjoy those breakfasts though.

Yellowstone was great. We did the majority of the loop that day and saw paint pots, springs, geysers, and all geological features Yellowstone has to offer. We're lucky to have a friend who is a former Yellowstone Ranger and he'd given us a list of must see places. We took almost every turn out and walked and walked and walked. That afternoon we explored Lower Geyser Basin, where Old Faithful is. We had already seen it erupt, and headed up to Observation Point. We were lucky to get there just as it erupted, so we got to see it from a distance and up close. While we were perusing the basin a heard of Buffalo was working out some group conflicts. For the most part, people were keeping their distance. We watched a bit and continued on. When we were headed back on the other side of the loop, we were cautious because the buffalo were right on the other side of the small river. As we strolled along, one of them popped out from behind a tree about 75 yards from us and started a quick stroll along the path toward us. We wasted no time in turning on our heels and walking briskly back where we had come from. It was hard to do because we'd covered some serious mileage that day and were hoping to make it back the short way, but then, we were also hoping to make it back. As we turned we recruited a woman who was gazing across the river to follow us out of harms way. She came along and called to her husband who was a few yards back. He was feeling super human and suggested they stay, so they did. We did not. We talked to each other about how stupid people can be on our way back to the turn back to the parking lot. As we came back along the other side of the river, we looked across to the other pathway to see our friends of limited intelligence on the path between two buffalo. I assume they made it out okay because there wasn't anything in the news. But come on people, use your heads! There's a reason there are signs in all the bathrooms talking about folks getting gored. Is that really how you want to spend your vacation?

The next day we drove out through Lamar valley and saw wolves, prong horns, and more buffalo. But the best was still to come. We drove out the Northeast Entrance and over Bear Tooth Pass. This is one of those you must do it before you die sorts of places. You drive up the mountains on switch backs to just over 10,000 feet and then do the same thing back down to Red Lodge Montana. The views are indescribable and impossible to capture on camera, though I tried. I went through 2 rounds of batteries. Each turn was more beautiful than the last. Near the top you enter Montana. We wanted to get a photo there, so I set the camera on automatic on top of the car and ran to join Joe. We did this three times. Now, when you look at the picture you might wonder why we parked so far away. I did too after 3 sprints near 10,o00 feet. I'd say more about the pass and feel like I should because we both agree it was the best part of the trip, but it was all just feeling and seeing. You must must go.

Red Lodge was fabulous. It was tiny, cute, fun, and had pizza. We set up our camp at a charming RV park and headed into town to indulge in pizza. Indulge we did. I think we both ate an enormous amount. We slept well that night, got up and had cold cereal and headed into town for our morning coffee and tea.

That day we covered the ground in Montana. So, a bit about Montana. Much of my family is from Montana and I've always found that it just feels like home. I don't know why. I never lived there. We also have friends from Montana and pretty much anyone you meet from Montana proclaims it as God's country. Joe had never been, but he needed to check it out to see if it could be on our short list of places to live. That day we made a quick trip to Billings and found it to be a most uninspiring place. The water front is wasted on industry and the landscape is no where near as appealing as other locations in Montana. Granted, it is better than what lies east of Billings. We then checked out Bozeman. We found Bozeman to be charming, but it seemed a bit snooty...okay not a bit, just outright snooty. While we were in Bozeman we had the great opportunity to visit a college friend of mine and her family. Last time I saw Rachel, she was single and headed off to start her PhD. Now she's nearly done, is married, and has a wonderful son. It was so nice to reunite, even just briefly. We left there and headed to Helena to see my Aunt Beck and Uncle Herb.

I love visiting my Aunt Beck and Herb because they are just so relaxed and relaxing. They live in an historic neighborhood with neighbors who all talk to each other. Their front porch has room for chairs and looks out into the neighborhood (the front porch is a lost art and I think it has huge ramifications for community connectivity--but that's another story). It's the perfect place to sit and be after a morning hike up Mt. Helena, which is about 3 blocks from their house, or to drink tea on a cool evening at dusk. They also have a tiny little house at the back of their property with, get this, a bed. We fell into bed that night and slept like only campers can sleep. The next morning we toured the town. We walked downtown, reserved a loaf of fresh baked bread from the bakery, checked out the shops in Last Chance Gulch, and walked around Carroll College's campus. I can't remember the exact order of everything, because it was so relaxing that I didn't have to keep a schedule in mind. While we were there we did hike up Mt. Helena, saw our dear friend Brian, and had lunch at the Windbag, a place that was a brothel up until the 70s. We spent a lot of time just chatting too. We were both sad to leave Helena and it definitely made the short list.

On our way back to Washington, we drove through Missoula. We fully expected to love Missoula, but it was definitely a college town and we'd like to be able to get away from work a bit more than college towns really allow. As we left we realized that we didn't like any of the towns people said we would like, and did like Helena, which everyone told us we would find boring. Well, mystery solved. We're boring people who just want a few good restaurants, a cozy neighborhood, a lot of sun, at least some snow, outdoor opportunities, and a bakery to frequent. Shows, shops and all that are not necessities for us. We like to go to bed at 10. We're boring, but very happy being boring.

We intended to stay in Spokane, but found it to be completely unacceptable. Before we visited it topped our short list. We drove and drove and drove trying to find a place we could live. It just wasn't there. At that point we were tired of traveling and ready to go home, but we still wanted to see Walla Walla. We decided to make the trek all the way home, but to spend a few hours in Walla Walla. We headed south through the Palouse. I'd seen photos of the Palouse and it's beautiful, but driving through gave me an incredibly eerie feeling. The hills are so big and so regular that I could absolutely picture being forever lost. The houses lie in the valleys between the hills. If I lived and farmed there, I would never leave without a GPS (which I have never thought of as a necessity nor owned) even though I have a fairly amazing sense of direction. It made me wonder how people lived there before GPS.

Walla Walla was charming little town and probably deserves more of our attention later on. It seemed very far from anywhere though. Perhaps that was because we reached it through the Palouse. We had a great dinner there at a Mexican restaurant, checked out Whitman's campus, and headed home. I remarked that if I could still be guaranteed to get Joe out of the deal, I would go to Whitman if I had the opportunity to do it again.

It was a long drive home, but we made it. We unloaded the car at 3am went to bed at 4am and woke up without any unpacking to do!

The trip really was wonderful. We learned things about ourselves, each other, how we like to camp, and where we might like to live. Perhaps the most surprising result of the trip is my new desire for a travel trailer of some sort. I don't want anything big, but if we're going to be camping with bears, I'd just as soon have something hard sided to keep from having to do lots of loading and unloading. Besides then you can just pick up and leave anytime you want. The tent served us well though, and we came back rested and happy.