The Emerald City

Day 4 - Monday, August 15

Port Angeles, WA to Seattle, WA

Monday morning we woke up without any real plans set in stone...we wanted to go to Olympic National Park but then we would be back tracking which we didn't really want to do, and we had Vida which put us in a serious predicament when it came to checking out of the hotel on time since we couldn't bring her to the park with us.  Eventually, while eating breakfast at a great bagel shop, we came to the conclusion that we should just make our way over to Seattle and we should stop along the way if we saw anything cool that we needed to take pictures of or check out.  That being said, hotel reservations were the next thing on the list...which required about 30 minutes of calling around trying to find the best deal.  

Now we had two options when it came to getting to Seattle...one was to drive all the way down the Olympic Peninsula and then back up to Seattle on the other side, or we could take the ferry across Puget Sound and save time and gas money.  Of course, like I said earlier, this whole trip was kinda on a whim...which meant I really didn't know if they would allow dogs on the ferry until we practically got there which was stressful to say the least.  Once we finally got on the ferry, it only took about 30 minutes to get from Bainbridge Island to Seattle and the scenery was beautiful the entire time!!

Once we got off the ferry, I had the fabulous idea to try to find a dog park so that Vida could get out and play for a little bit...let's just say that the GPS thought it knew where the dog park was and it send us on a wild goose chase!  Long story short, we could see the dog park...but Vida never got to play in it because we couldn't find the parking lot!  I felt so bad for her but since I'm such a great parent, when we got to the hotel, I ran her around the hotel a few times like a loony person:)  After I felt like she was tired enough to sleep for a while, Brian and I left to spend the afternoon/evening in Seattle.

Our first stop was Pike's Market which is a huge arts/crafts/farmer's/fish market in downtown Seattle right on the water.  As we were driving over, I noticed this big white cloud right over the city's skyline...a few minutes later I caught another glimpse of this "cloud" and realized that it wasn't a cloud at all but it was Mount Rainier!!  It seriously towered over the entire city and was beautiful!  Whoever said Seattle is a rainy city was a liar!  We had beautiful weather and were able to sit out a cute little pub for happy hour, and then make our way over to a fun sushi restaurant.  The day seemed to fly by, but we had a great time!!!

Driving onto the Bainbridge Ferry

View from the ferry

Seattle Space Needle

Seattle Skyline

Pike Place Market

They kind of look alike...

Happy hour..

Happy hour...

Not so happy hour... a bird pooped on me!!!  Thank goodness it didn't make it into my drink!

The first Starbucks is in Pike Place Market

Mt. Rainier in the background

The flower pots were unreal all over the Pacific Northwest

From One "Port" to the other "Port"

Day 3 - Sunday, August 14
Portland, OR to Port Angeles, WA


I don't think that I've really mentioned this before, but...the road trip is a little bit out of the ordinary for me. Usually, I have everything planned out before hand so I know exactly where we are going, when we're going to get there, how long it will take us to drive, yada yada yada.  Well this time, planning went out the window and we're just kinda flying by the seat of our pants and it's driving me CRAZY!  I hate not really knowing where I'm going to stay that night especially since we are limited in our options as not everywhere takes dogs.  Either way, I tried to get over my Type A personality and just go with it...as hard as that was.  


On Sunday morning, we woke up and decided that we would take an urban hike through Portland.  Apparently, there are some really nice trails that give you good views of the city and of Mt. Hood.  Unfortunately, we were not lucky enough to find these so called urban trails, as our GPS was a little bit on the fritz and because of some road work.  Needless to say, we drove around parts of the city for about an hour before we decided to call it quits and head out.  Oh, where were you going, you ask?  We didn't really know...


So far, the first half hour in the car each day has consisted of me draining the battery on Brian's iphone to frantically figure out where we should go.  After we figure that out, I'm stuck the the daunting task of finding a hotel in that city that accepts dogs...which so far has not been too hard.  As you guessed, once we left Portland, the next half hour or so I was occupied planning the rest of our day.  Since I was deemed the master planner, I decided that we were in it for the long haul, and we were going to to to Port Angeles...a city at the very tip of the Olympic Peninsula across the water from Canada...and instead of taking the boring interstate, I decided that we needed to take the scenic, ocean view highway.  You see, when I was little, my family took a trip up to Washington state and I absolutely loved the pacific coast...which meant that Brian obviously had to experience what I did...no matter how long it made the car trip.  


Honestly, it was kind of a long drive...but it was beautiful!  The Olympic Peninsula is gorgeous and we definitely want to go back and spend some time there!  It's home to the only rainforest in the continental U.S.  It's not a tropical rainforest, but a temperate rainforest which means that the foliage and animals are completely different than what you think of in a typical rainforest.  Unfortunately, we did not actually go into the rainforest since Vida was with us, but we were able to visit the Olympic National Park beaches, which were awesome!!  

Being patriotic:)

She loves sticking her head out the window!

Ruby Beach, Olympic National Park

Me and my fur child taking a walk on the beach...

There were tons of starfish stuck to the rocks!  It was so neat!

Playing tug-of-war

We would see these signs every so many miles where loggers had harvested forests...it tells you when it was harvested, when the forest was replanted, and when it will be harvested again.

This is for all you Twilight fans...

Crescent Lake

The entire area is plagued by Twilight pictures...

Sunset in Port Angeles

And the road trip begins...

Days 1 & Day 2

Friday August 12 & Saturday August 13

Our road trip this year is going to be a little different that the road trip last year.  Last year, we were on a tighter schedule to get from point A to point B.  This year, we have a little bit of leeway as Brian is finally allowed to use some of his vacation days...so instead of booking it across the country and seeing the same things we did last year, we decided to make a 2 week vacation out of it...even if it does mean going a little bit out of our way.  Our first stop on Friday night was about 2.5 hours north of where we lived in California to a place called Redding.  It's near a big lake called Lake Shasta as well as a big mountain called...you guessed it...Mt. Shasta.  We didn't really spend much time here except sleeping as we wanted to get back on the road and on our way to Portland.

While on our way to Portland, we decided to take a little detour to Crater Lake...a lake in the southern part of Oregon in Crater Lake National Park.  The lake is the clearest lake in the United States...it's also one of the deepest, and in my opinion, prettiest.  It's a lake that formed in the collapsed crater of a volcano and that is filled entirely by snowmelt.  It has nothing feeding into it or leaving it, which means that the lake level only fluctuates about 5 feet a year due to evaporation and snow melt.  We were in complete awe when we saw the lake and couldn't believe how blue it was!  We just sat there and stared at it forever!  Finally, we decided that we better get going so we could make it to Portland before it got completely dark.

Mt. Shasta

Dirt Twister!!  While we were driving, we saw this crazy little dirt twister in the middle of a field...so crazy!

Made it to Oregon!

Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon

I just always love these signs

So blue!!!

Island in the middle of Crater Lake

Very privileged dog

So pretty!  

Sunset on our way to Portland...almost there

Last Day in California

It's hard to believe that moving day has finally arrived...it feels literally like we just moved here!  We had a great year and we can't believe that our time out here is already over!  It will be nice to be back in the south, but at the same time, there are definitely going to be things that we miss about living out here!  For instance...the scenery is just fabulous!  We are going to miss the rolling hills, the vineyards, the orchards, and the mountains.  We are also going to miss all the fantastic outdoor activities that are all within a few hours!  You can ski, bike, swim, hike, mountain climb etc all within a few hours of each other!  Of course, what makes all of these fabulous things possible is the great weather...which is another one of the many things that we will miss about the west coast.  The weather is hard to beat...there's really no other place that compares.  We didn't have to use our air conditioner in the summer as there was always a breeze and it never got super hot, and in the winter, it would get cold and rainy, but nothing unbearable.  Plus, if it's cold and rainy in the valley, it means that it's snowing up in the mountains which is good for skiing!

Enough reminiscing about how much we loved it here...let's talk about our moving fun!  As many of you know, Brian was out of the country for about 3 weeks recently which meant that I was stuck here to take care of a lot of the moving details (great timing right?!).  Anyway, it was my responsibility to set up the move...so I went to the Traffic Management Office (or TMO as the Air Force likes to call it) filled out all the necessary paperwork (of course I had to have power of attorney for everything to do this!!) and scheduled our moving date.  Of course, as luck would have it and although everything was filled out correctly, I never received a phone call from the actual moving company as the Air Force said I would.  Unfortunately, getting in touch with Brian was kinda difficult as his internet service was sketchy, and he was unable to check any of his phone messages...which I had a feeling is who the movers called...instead of me.  Finally, about a week later, we get all of this figured out, the movers give me a date...I tuck it away in my mental filing cabinet and move on with my life for the next few weeks until moving week approached.

Now what I learned from our last move was that although a moving company was coming to pack all our stuff, that still means there's plenty of preparation to do.  For instance, all the food needs to be eaten (not a terrible thing right?!), all the liquids need to be disposed of/used up, all the laundry needs to be done, etc etc.  I had this all planned out in my mind...what day I was going to do each chore...until Brian comes home on Tuesday afternoon with some bad news and tells me that the movers called and said they would be here tomorrow morning around 8.  Now this is bad news because we weren't expecting the movers until Thursday...that's a whole precious day's worth of time that we were losing in our moving preparation time!!!  I FREAKED OUT!!!  Needless to say, it was a late night of packing our own bags, packing the car, doing laundry, removing a satellite dish off the side of our house, cleaning, and on top of it all, taking care of a sick dog (Vida was under the weather for a while).  Eight A.M. came early the next morning as the movers came in and got right to it...all of our stuff was packed in 133 boxes within a matter of hours...unfortunately the moving truck wasn't going to be there to pick it all up until Friday which meant we had to sit amongst the boxes for a little while.  All in all, we had over 300 things listed on the inventory and filled up almost half the huge moving truck.  Finally, our house was empty and made that weird echoing sound that empty houses make...we took one last walk down to the pretty mountains and vineyards to say goodbye to the horses.  As our last day in our house in California came to an end, we took our time and drove through the scenic roads by our house in Green Valley and tried to take some mental pictures.  We'll never forget out experiences out here and we are definitely looking forward to going back to visit in the future!!

Kitchen getting all packed up

Moving van 

Brian sad to leave:(

Vineyards on our final walk

Vineyards along our walking path

Tree lined walking path I probably walked/ran on 200 times this past year

Car packed and ready to go...that's right people...there's a box of cheerios in there.  Those of you who know me, this probably doesn't surprise you.

This is the status of the car right when we left.  We'll take one of these when we get to Charleston to see the difference.

On our way out, we drove past this field of beautiful sunflowers right by our house that we always meant to take pictures of...the sunset was pretty too!

They're so tall!

Beautiful sunset on our way out

Final Trip to Napa

As a final goodbye to California, my friend Lindsay, her adorable baby boy Sam, and I went to Napa one final time before we all moved away.  Lindsay and her hubby are moving to Mt. Home, Idaho which will definitely be fun and interesting, but we both agree that it's going to be hard to beat Travis AFB.  For our last adventure into Napa, Lindsay suggested we go to Yountville.  Yountville is a cute little town off of Highway 12 on the way to Napa that I totally wish I would have known about earlier!  It was absolutely adorable...although half of the restaurants are completely of my price range, it is still super cute and tons of fun!  We went to eat at a fun little place called Bottega, which was fabulous!!  Afterwards, we got some Bouchon cookies, Model Bakery english muffins and some cupcakes at Dean & Delucas.  It was fabulous!!

My yummy ravioli

Me, Lindsay and Sam

Me and Sam

The Last Supper

As we all predicted, this one year residency program for Brian had to come to an end.  We made some great friends over the past year that we will definitely miss but we know we will all keep in touch in some way or another:)  To celebrate the completion of their residency program, all of the residents, their families, and their bosses/professors along the way all went out to dinner together.  It was definitely a bittersweet ending as we are all excited for the residency to be over although we are all sad to move on and leave such great friends.  Here are some pictures from the dinner...

Brian and Dr. Chong and his "decision making" dart board...if you look carefully you can see that each section of the dart board has different dental specialties instead of numbers because Brian has, at one point or another, considered doing all of them.

All 6 of the residents with their new Air Force surgical caps.

All the boys...

All the girls...

Stay tuned for our road trip updates...things have been crazy and we haven't had a second to chill out and catch up!!