Summer in Review

Summer 2015 has been busy. So, this blog has been a little quiet for several months. Here's a brief review of the summer's events.

June: Drive to Washington State...

Redding, CA. Despite the name, we didn't stay here. We stayed at the Thunderbird down the street, and it served us just fine. We rolled in at 2am with no reservation; they were dog-friendly and the room was clean.

Heavenly Donuts, Redding, CA. The donuts were heavenly, the breakfast bagel was not.

...to get married (photo: Jenny Jimenez).

Hanging out with family for a few days in La Conner.

Kiket island, low tide, June 2015.

 Brief Ritchlips Road Trip (a few more photos here on Instagram).

Ice for sale (for beer and fish), Nordland/Marrowstone, WA. Across the street from this is one of the most comprehensive and well displayed General Stores I've ever visited.

Former site of the Elwha dam, a must-see destination for restoration tourists like ourselves. This is the largest dam removal site in US history.

Enormous driftwood at South Beach, Olympic National Park.

July: Back home with visitor Mabel.

Special visitors from ABQ.

August: Back to Work. The ring holds up to gardener work.

Go hang out in Canada for a week.

Yes, we had our limousine driver stop at McDonald's. The good times were only beginning!

This is a screen shot from my iPhone, which counts your steps. The lull in the middle of this graph represents our time at Balsam Lake. I wasn't as much of a sloth as it appears -- I just didn't have my phone with me, or on, most of the time. I think the spike was the day that Andrew, Lila, and I went to the Blue Jays game and kicked around Toronto.

Late August: Move. 

Original reservation with U-Haul: check out truck at 8am, return by 9pm. Reality: We returned the truck at 6:56am after pulling an all-nighter of packing as we moved. Lessons were learned!

Now, it's late September, our new place is still on a room-by-room basis, but we're happy here. Fairly regular (?) posts from americanature will resume. I've been having fun with instagram, too.