Weekend in Orcas Island

It is peeing down with rain and blowing a gale outside, so figured I'd do a bit o bloggin and give you the low down on our weekend in Orcas Island.

We arrived there, in the pouring rain of course, but the weather fined up and we had cold but beautiful sunny days. It was so so lovely, very relaxing, we had a wonderful time.

We stayed at a place called The Homestead in a renovated barn right on the water. It had a log fire, dock on the water and a hot tub for us to soak away the worries of the day.

Rocky-m did a few miles taking us up Mt Constitution twice (first day was fogged in) and across to Friday Harbour on a ferry exclusively for Rocky-m. We considered going out on Halloween night, but the thought of all the crazy locals dressed up and raring for crowd participation had Kev going straight to the supermarket to get stuff to cook.

On the Sunday we headed out on a boat to see if we could spot a whale or two. We didn't, but it was beautiful and we saw a few eagles, sea-lions and seals.

Mum and Dad fly out to Las Vegas on Monday meeting my aunt and uncle there. They have a trip to the Grand Canyon, a few other things then they are off to LA for a couple of days before heading back to Oz. Tomorrow we're going to the Seahawks game, see how they like that. It's been a good to see them.

Out looking for bears in the Moran national park.

Rocky-m out from of our cabin

Take 1 - view from Mt Constitution

Take 2 - view from Mt Constitution

Dad on the boat looking for whales

Kev and Dad considering renting a boat on Mountain Lake

Maybe not.....

Rocky-m exclusive ferry service from Orcas Island to Friday Harbour.

American Camp on San Juan Island

View from our cabin

Quality time in the hot tub

Dad doing his best Titanic impersonation, he looks like Leonardo don't you think?

Stellar Sea Lion

On the ferry back to Anacortes

Our dock and sailing boat at the cabin

Family reunion in Chicago

Yep, more visits and visitors!

On the 7th Mum and Dad Aubrey flew in to SF, sister-Karin arrived from Paris in to Chicago on the 11th, M&D flew to Chicago too, then I did on the 15th, then Kev crashed the party on the 16th. With 5 of us, I figure that makes a family reunion!

Aside from Karin being 8-months pregnant and seeing everyone yudda yudda, the big news is that while Kev was at work I managed to convince Mum, Dad and Karin that a short road trip was in order. As a result, I can now add Wisconsin to my list of new states in 2009. A day at the Harley Davidson museum in Milwalkee was all it took. Now I'm 2 states ahead of Kev overall, 1 this year (all good).

Now that I've got that little announcement out of the way, the museum was actually really good. I had no idea that H-D was one of the pioneers of motorized transport producing their first bike in 1903. Apparently the motorbike was a revelation over the car because you could travel to a lot more places. The reason being that the roads where really poor and a motorbike requires less road. We also learnt that H-D produced a load of service and military bikes. It wasn't until the Vietnam Vets returned and adopted the brand as a sign of freedom that the brand became more of a "bikers" bike. There's a little history for you :-)

Aside from that, we had a cold but good time exploring Chicago. Ate some good food. Hung out in Wicker Park, had a drink up the John Handcock building, choked down deep dish pizza and visited the Picasso sculpture.

Lucky Karin collected 100 items of baby clothes from my Mum. All individually ironed of course. And she flies back to Paris today with them. We are back in Seattle and Mum and Dad are enjoying the grey-Seattle weather.

Celebration on Whidbey Island

Big news.....we're at home in Seattle this weekend! Yes, after a 3 out of 4 weekends away marathon, Kev and I are staying local this weekend sleeping in our own bed, spending some quality time on the lounge. Might even get some life-admin done. And of course, a bit-o-bloggin.

Last weekend we had a fabulous time on Whidbey Island helping Michael celebrate his 40th birthday. Whidbey Island is 1-2 hours north-west of Seattle depending on if you get on the ferry or go north to go over a bridge. Apparently it is the second largest island in contiguous US (keeping in mind almost everywhere we go in the US is the biggest of something).

A bunch of us met at The Inn at Langley on Friday night, got acquainted at a local restaurant and enjoyed a few cocktails and bottles of champagne. On Saturday 5 of us decided to hire mopeds and we spent the afternoon terrorising the locals as the Langley 5. Mary Kay and I were really hardcore wearing purple bandannas under our helmets. Dave, as the only person who had ever had a motorcycle license was tasked with bringing up the rear and Kev took control of the map. We were fearless as we tore round the island, stopping in at an art exhibition-cum-open-house, picking up a cappuccino at the local servo and finally cramming 3-bottles of wine from Whidbey Island Winery in the seat of our mopeds on the way back to Langley. It was a beautiful day, and the mopeds were great fun despite requiring a little bit of leg-power to carry us up hills (very Flintstones).

On Saturday night, 20 of us gathered to celebrate Michael's birthday at the restaurant at the Inn. The chef is a bit of a local celebrity and focuses on using local produce - Chef Matt Costello. He prepared a 6-course degustation menu with matching wines. The kitchen was open to the dining room which was interesting. The food was excellent and the company fantastic. We had a lot of laughs.

On Sunday Mary Kay, Kathryn, Kev and I played a round at the Holmes Harbor golf course on Whidbey. It was awful. I think we were probably a little too tired/hungover. The views from the course were beautiful, however the fairways felt a little crowded by the houses. I managed to drive 2 balls in to 2 yards, actually, the front yard (over the back yard on the fairway, over the roof, and in to the front yard). Oh well.

We had a spectacular drive home via Deception Point and back in to Seattle. It was a lovely weekend. Great people, good food and a lot of laughs. Happy birthday Michael.

Mary Kay and Alan all rugged up to set out on our road trip

Dave and Alan hooning round the car park by the beach

Ready to cruise

Pit stop

Kev looking very suave on his moped

They were picking at Whidbey Island Winery.

Kathryn and Michael sitting at the head of the table

Stopped to look at the sunset at Deception Point

Sunset at Deception Point

3-state weekend courtesy Rich and Makayla

This last weekend we managed to cram in 3 new states - Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana - courtesy of Rich and Makayla having a fab wedding reception in Ohio. (thanks R&M)

We took off Friday morning flying in to the Cincinnati/North Kentucky Airport that night. In order to consider our visit to Kentucky genuine, we staying in a lovely B&B in Burlington that night and ate Hot Brown and Fried Chicken at the local Tavern. It was a charming little town (yes, charming, and in the US.....) with a lot of the 19th century buildings beautifully restored. This included our B&B where we staying in one of the attic rooms.

On Saturday, we jumped in our awful, awful hire car of which the only good thing it had going for it was that the roof came off. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed a quick ride across the Ohio River in to Indiana followed by 9-holes at the Sugar Ridge golf course with our new Kentucky golf friends - Suzanne and Greg.

Suzanne and Greg were good fun, talked and talked, plenty of laughs. Greg managed to get through 5 beers and a cigar on the first 9-holes, we teed off at 10.22...... When we left them, Greg had popped in to the club house to collect himself another 6 beers. Looked like they were going to have a good day.

We, on the other hand, had a wedding reception to get to, so we jumped back in the car and zoomed across the border (spitting distance from the golf course, but still, we were in Indiana) and headed to Cedarville where we stayed at the Hearthstone Inn.

After a short spell in the jacuzzi and a long spell making ourselves beautiful, we had a few pre-wedding drinks with Andy, Katherine and Parker. Now normally one wouldn't think too much of this, but in this case, Cedarville is a dry town. Yep, that's right, no booze. Andy and Katherine had to search high and low in the surrounding area to find some light beer and average wine. After enjoying our illegal activity, we headed off across the corn fields to the wedding reception at a local golf course.

Here we set ourselves upon the task of having a good time. Which, wasn't that difficult since Dave the barman was pouring a pretty stiff drink in all forms (he also had no qualms about handing over the bottle so I didn't have to return so frequently).

Rich and Makayla looked fabulous. It was great to meet their family and friends. We had a great time catching up with Andy and Katherine and managed to get home across the corn fields without getting lost or falling over. On Sunday we fortified ourselves with a huge huge very greasy breakfast at Bob Evans (no espresso, no sparkling water.....I know.....crazy).

Some of our sights from our 3-state weekend are below. Thanks to Makayla and Rich for the invite.

Andy leading me astray.

Kev looking sharp.

Katherine and Parker sharing a drink.

Rich and Makayla looking radiant.

Evidence that we did actually go to Indiana.

And Kentucky....

And Ohio.

We didn't go here, but geez, what a spectacle!

Rocky-m's second road trip

Tragically, I have only 5 public holidays each year (bloody awful, don't get Anzac day, Australia day or Good Friday, don't know what the locals are thinking?). The first weekend of September is one of these 5 days with Labor Day (yep, no "u", more craziness).

To celebrate we decided to take Rocky-m on a road trip to Crater Lake in Southern Oregon. Crater Lake is a huge lake in a 7,700 year old volcanic crater in the top of a big mountain. All the photos we had seen were stunning so we headed off to see it.

We left later on Fri night and had a nice clear run through to Portland, stayed the night and spent Saturday morning wine tasting in the Willamette Valley. Picked up some lovely Pinot among other things from Rex Hill Winery and Calrton Wine Studio.

We then headed off in to the wilderness to stay in a cabin by a river in the national park. It was a lovely drive, plenty of tight corners to test Rocky on, although Kev took it pretty easy on her, big softy!

We stayed at a place called The Steamboat Inn. No phone reception, middle of nowhere. We had dinner at the Inn. They only do one sitting and everyone is seated at long group tables. We were lucky enough to be sat with 6 other interesting people. We discovered across the night that we had one Austrian, one South African and 4 Americans along with us two, none of us from the Pacific Northwest, an interesting mix.

The next morning Kev dragged me out of bed early allowing 2 hours to drive to Crater Lake, 15 mins to check in for the boat tour and 45 mins to walk down in to the crater to get the boat tour. Now my policy is not to get out of bed before 10 on a weekend so this was a bit of a struggle.

Anyway, made it out on time and it was my turn to drive. Had a lovely time driving through the mountains with no traffic and made record time to Crater Lake - 1 hour. We got up to the tour-shack way early, parked, opened the doors and.....FROZE! It had dropped to 0/32 degrees and was chucking it down with ice-daggers. I rooted around in to boot putting on as many clothes as I could find while Kev stood in the ice-daggers waiting for the slowest human being on the planet to "check us in". About 45 minutes later we got to the front of the line to discover that all the tours so far had been cancelled because it was so windy on the lake. He said we could walk down in to the crater on the off chance our tour was heading out in the next hour.

We headed off, walking down in to the crater the equivalent to 67 flights of stairs, freezing every step of the way. Got to the bottom, tour was cancelled. It was however incredibly beautiful. The lake is up to 600 meters deep and has a small volcanic island in the middle. The crater is huge and apparently the water is the cleanest in the world (I think that Lake Mackenzie on Fraser Island is, but hey, who's arguing).

So, we looked around, froze, I went to the eco-dunnies (gagged the whole time) and then we headed back up the crater. 67-flights of very steep stairs later, we jumped in Rocky-m and turned the heated seats on. So, while we didn't spend the whole date at Crater Lake, it was beautiful, we're pleased we went, but the visit was short. We did however meet the Griswalds on the way out, Kev took their photo just moments before the 10 of them ran shouting down towards the car - kids, dog, grandparents and parents - and noisily piled in to their mini-bus. Really, it was the Griswalds.

Although our time in Crater Lake was cut short, we did have a lovely time in Bend, Oregan, played a bit of golf at this cool new course and did a bit of shopping. We had a long drive back on Monday to Seattle and decided to take the scenic route through Mt Rainer National Park - it was raining and totally fogged in so we saw bugger all, never mind.

Last weekend we staying in Seattle for a change. Played a bit of golf - Kev and I both eagled a hole with Kev playing in from 140 yards out and me chipping in from a sand bunker, so funny, total fluke. This coming weekend we're off to Ohio for Rich and Makayla's wedding party. All going to plan we'll pick up 4 new states by flying in to the Kentucky airport in Cincinnati and then cruising through Indiana and West Virginia in the convertible we've hired. Fingers crossed for good weather!

Col

Atlanta, Idaho...not Georgia

Col and I have just got back from quite a remarkable weekend. Not super relaxing or luxurious,but extraordinary none-the-less. Thanks to Andy and Tim for hosting.

We spent the weekend in Atlanta, Idaho. Actually when we got on the plane on Friday lunchtime, we didn't know exactly where we were going! We knew we were flying to Boise (Idaho's state capital) and then driving for a few hours to get to a cabin. Andy picked us up from Boise and we set off. Andy is in the process of renovating his cabin - in fact he has two cabins on a piece of land in Atlanta. So we called in at Home Depot for some materials and then hit the road. We drove out of Boise heading north east towards the Sawtooth Mountain range. The first hour or so was on a freeway, it was a beautiful drive - winding up through the foothills and along the river side, then we turned off the freeway and saw a sign to Atlanta - 41 miles - ALL ON DIRT ROAD. The next two hours we bumped and skidded along a reasonably well maintained dirt road - stunning scenery, chipmunks, wild turkeys and the occasional deer!

We arrived in Atlanta shortly after dark, and took a spin around town, which took about 1 minute! The town's current population is 40 - or thereabouts. It is an old mining town that peaked in population about 70-100 years ago, at about 3,000. Some houses have been kept beautifully, others are in the process of renovation and others have fallen into disrepair.

Andy is doing some serious work to his cabin, a cabin where he actually spent the last couple of years of his childhood. His family at one time or another had owned the bar and store, and a number of the cabins.

Our walk around town the following day was really amazing. I am not sure that any description could do it justice, so check out the pictures.

Not only was the town itself a spectacle, the surrounding scenery was unbelievable, the Sawtooth Mountains, the Boise River, beaver dams and hot springs! All within a short walk of this great little town.

What people do there now, we are not too sure - drink, smoke, hang out...that's pretty much it. There is no longer a shop or a bar in the town and the drive to Boise is a good 3 hours! Take all you want in with you.

We can't stop talking about it at the moment, it has left quite an impression.

Andy's main cabin - Lee and Merlin in the background putting a roof on the back porch.

Main street!

Cabins in 'town'...inhabited.

The Sawtooth range.

The 'country club' as it's known to the locals - icy cold but extremely refreshing!

Chatanooga - hot springs. The waterfall is running at about 90 degrees F, the pool a little closer to 80 - awesome!

Ichiro, Ichiro, Ichiro!!!

As usual, it's been a busy few weeks. When is it not? Seems odd that I always start a post by saying this since it is basically a given. Anyway, crazy that 4 weeks have passed by since our last "news" post. Getting a bit slack, apologies.

What have we been busy with? Mostly work is keeping us both on our toes. But we've also had the pleasure of having Kay visit from Sydney (my cousin). She just flew out 2 days ago, back to Sydney and work.

While she was here we managed to pack a lot of things in. Everything from walking in Discovery Park and dinner on the deck, to winning the Trivia Night at Columbia Tower and cheering on the Mariners (in particular Ichiro who is Kay's new favorite sports hero). It was the first baseball game that any of us had been to and we had a great night, even though there was no score after 11 innings! Ichiro, with his crazy-batting stance was fabulous and did a great job in the field. Check out this video of his pre-stance-routine, very funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pdaL8JwXEs

We ate hot dogs and kettle corn, Kev ordered a beer from a bloke with a big foam hat on who yelled his way up and down the stairs. Kay was getting top tips on the game from the guy sitting next to us and I, embarrassingly, ducked my head and flung my arms up to wildly protect myself when a foul ball rockets in our very-general-direction (there were about 10 people with baseball mitts around us who no doubt would have caught the ball).

Aside from hanging out with Kay, I have been thinking about retirement plans and have started to come up with a few options. So far I have......

A. Move back to Sydney and work for Google

B. Become a pro-golfer (by the time I'm 45, so plenty of practice time)

C. Be a race car driver (me and Rocky the mini)

D. Join a band as the drummer (they look like they have the most fun)

Tim suggested I join a carnival or circus, which I haven't discounted, but have it with a placeholder against Option Z.....

If you have any suggestions, please do throw them out there. I'm open to ideas!

Col