Category Archives: Travel

Oh, Mexico! I Never Really Been But I Sure Want to Go!

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La Paz. Man, I sure want to go. And stay for a long time. Desert and ocean. Two great things that go great together.

And before anyone emails me about the grammar in that title, those are the actual words from the James Taylor song. And they describe my state of mind just perfectly! For many moons now Mike and I have been dreaming of the day we’d get to go down to the Baja peninsula in Mexico and soak in the local culture, food, water, and warmth. Those days are approaching!

Before people get too excited, we aren’t getting to go down on our boat. No, this is a ‘preliminary’ trip to celebrate or 30th wedding anniversary and look at some boats for sale down south. You can get a lot more for the money down there, we hear.  We’re going to skip Cabo San Lucas completely and go directly to La Paz, otherwise known as ‘La Pause’, in cruising circles because so many cruisers get there and decide to stay awhile. We’re very excited and I’m sure Mike is already anticipating trouble getting me back on the plane to come home. I’m anticipating the same from him, so we’re even. I might have to have my temper tantrum here, before we go, so as to save him some embarrassment.

In that wonderful, synchronistic way that the Universe has, we’ve just discovered some pretty cool bloggers who are living the dream on their boat down Mexico way. Stephan and Lulu Yoder are just far enough ahead of us in this wild plan to be our new role models. I read their blog with stars in my eyes and envy in my heart. They really have the right attitude: sleep when you want to, get up when you want to, go somewhere and stay as long as you feel like it, eat really good food. Basically, leave the whole ‘work ethic thing’ behind, and good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. And they’ve spent much time in La Paz, so they know some great places to stay and to eat. Plus, Mike and Stephan have some career stuff in common, and Lulu is a craftswoman! They are so much like us, they could BE us, except that they are living on their boat in Mexico and we aren’t. Rats. 🙁

We wanted to go down in March, our anniversary month, but, alas, life has worked it out so that we can’t really go that month. We’re shooting for April and hoping the spring break crowd will stay in Cabo. I’m REALLY hoping the whale sharks will hang around until we get there and I can go snorkeling with them. But I’m not holding my breath. I think March is the latest they stay. So look for some awesome posts and photos from Mexico someday soon. And you can pretend we’re sending them from our boat. I know we’ll be pretending the same.

I would SOOOO do this. If they are there, I'm going to be over the moon with excitement.

 

Another Perfect Day!

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What is up with all the beautiful weather we’re having lately? I think it was close to 60 degrees today, and this is day 4 of this sunshine. It makes us feel like we’ve completely wasted a day when we cannot go sailing and the weather is this perfect. People who don’t live in the wet pacific northwest will not have a way to really understand the group ‘sunny day’ mentality here. When the sun comes out, people really celebrate. They take off from their jobs, come out of their houses, and go outside. People wear shorts and sandals as though it were summer. I’m not making that up. Suddenly, people get a spell of ‘happy’ and all is well with the world. Naturally, not a day can go to waste because the weather will probably change within 24 hours and it will be rain and low clouds again. Blech. In a word, winter here sucks. Pardon my French. When it’s sunny, Carpe diem, indeed! So 4 days in a row is a bit unheard of around here.

In a nutshell,  we’ve had perfect sailing weather lately. Well,  not really perfect. It’s bloody cold out on the water! I really want to go out, then we get out there and I’m freezing my hind end off. I hate being cold. As a middle aged woman, I already spend my life trying to stay warm. So being out on a boat in the cold has to be really, really worth it. Winter sailing makes me  want to look at boats with pilot houses, or at least a completely canvased cockpits. As it is, I go sailing as the great marshmallow woman, dressed in so many layers I can barely move.

Sadly, last Friday, a perfect winter sailing day, and Mike had to work. I hate things like jobs that interfere with my free time. Anyhow, I spent the day in Seattle… again NOT going to the boat show. I was thinking I would go, but the weather talked me out of it. Why sit in some room and listen to someone tell me about their cool trip to the South Pacific, or talk about sail trim when I can be outside?  It’s only going to irritate me that I can’t get out there right this minute and sail away. So I decided to stay outside and walk around Gasworks Park down on Lake Union, and maybe check out a few boats for sale in the general area as there are several yacht brokers on the lake. I’ve never been to Gasworks Park and it is totally cool! I had my phone, so I snapped a few photos for people who don’t live in this area. Don’t you love how phones take photos now? Who would have thought?

Cool view of downtown from the park. Actually, if it were bigger, you'd be able to see the boats at the outdoor part of the boat show.

As cities go, Seattle is definitely worthy of several photos. Wish I had a camera that would do justice to the night time view.

You can begin to see why it's called 'Gasworks Park'. I love the way they've made these industrial structures into art for the park.

Just loved the colors, and the moon in broad daylight.

 

The signs say 'no climbing'. Huh? What fun is that, then?

 

After work, Mike met me at The Armchair Sailor to browse their books, then we walked down to one of the yacht dealers on the lake and looked at boats. This dealer happens to have docks right by some of the more picturesque areas of houseboat living.

That boat to the right is for sale but, alas, at over $300,000, it's just a tad out of our price range.

We ended our fun evening by going to see Seattle’s version of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma at the 5th Avenue Theater. No matter what show you see, the theater is worth going to. It’s all art deco and completely restored. It’s just beautiful. Plus, it still has a very cool retro sign out front.

Too bad a still photo doesn't show all the twinkling these lights do.

And here’s a detail of the ceiling. I told you it was cool.

Dragon on the ceiling!

If you are in Seattle, go see something, anything, at the 5th Avenue. It’s worth it for the decor alone. And if it’s not raining, go to Gasworks Park. It’s fabulous, and it’s right across the street from Fisheries Supply! Can’t beat that with a stick!

 

 

Bow Before the Queen

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Queen of the Valley Inn

What makes a quick getaway even better? A beautiful place to stay, of course! And also bread pudding french toast and salted caramel sauce with coffee, black, for breakfast. That makes it very, very better. When you add to the mix the great company of new friends a quick get away becomes practically a vacation!

Sitting smack in the middle of beautiful protected farmland, the Queen, known to locals as the Armstrong House, was built in 1908 and is now owned by Shelly and Chris Davis. Shelly, a gregarious, generous, and entertaining hostess told us stories about how this house used to be THE party house in La Conner, the scene of many a prom or fancy ball. Apparently the third floor of the home, where the Davis family now lives, used to be one large open space and was referred to as the ball room. Cool! Makes me wonder what kind of interesting noises one might hear at night up on that third floor, especially at midnight…

The adorable sun porch which Shelly has transformed into a nice breakfast room.

But while old stories are nice, equally cool is the story of how Shelly and Chris were filmed by the reality TV show Radical Sabbatical on the Fine Living Network when they bought this place and renovated it into the bed and breakfast it is today. She entered a contest and won, and the prize was that she was followed around by TV cameras while she went through the most stressful time any home owner could imagine. Okay. I admit part of me was thinking ‘that’s complete insanity’. But I think Shelly would likely agree with that part of me. It’s also a pretty wild story, with a coolness factor that is hard to beat. No one filmed me when we renovated our house. All I have is a bunch of story boards with photos on them. You win, Shelly!

One of the fun things about The Queen: a cat door. Wish I had taken a photo of their dog, Maisie. She is very sweet and made me miss our Fran.

Staying at The Queen at the same time was the professional fishing couple Kathy and Kyle Rynning of Camano Island. Before I tell you what happened, let’s be sure we’re all on the same page here that Mike and I are generally not ‘friendly’ with others. It’s not that we don’t play well, it’s just that we’re usually not that interested in playing whatever game is afoot at the time. Between us we probably have no more than a handful of friends. But now we have more! We made friends with this lovely couple to the point that we actually went to dinner with them! That is correct. We went out with others and….. had a good time! Kathy and Kyle told us all about fishing for Salmon on the river up in Alaska, and about horses and living on Camano Island. We talked about kids and jobs and the fact that they had been at The Queen on their honeymoon. And Kathy and I talked about how it’s so hard to find cute boating clothes for women; clothes that don’t look like watered down stuff made for men. We had some ideas on what to do about that. And all the time I was looking at Kathy’s hair and thinking I would kill for hair like that. But she is so nice, I didn’t mention it.

The delightful Kathy Rynning and her glorious hair. Maybe if I used chemicals...

We went to Nell Thorn of La Conner for dinner. After the appetizer of tiny baby beets roasted with their greens I had the very best hamburger I’ve had in many years. I couldn’t finish it, but it was just as good the next day. They have this drink called Sugar Plum Fairy. It has brandy, lemon and ginger agave nectar and something called Tuaca, a vanilla citrus liqueur. It is completely yum.  I had two. This trip was lethal as far as the eating plan is concerned. Oh well. Life is short. (And if I keep eating like this it will be shorter.) Go to Nell Thorn, but make reservations. It’s deservedly popular.

Mike and Kyle visiting in the very comfortable living room.

I’m hoping we can go back to La Conner in the spring and stay at The Queen of the Valley Inn again. Shelly says that the field next to them will be planted with daffodils  this year and I can imagine how beautiful that setting will be for this house.