Welcome to Tacoma

 

We kind of snuck into Tacoma the back way. We went through something we now know is called “the pass” and exited I-90 on a smaller southwest-bound road and had to stop just a few minutes for traffic due to road construction. This was our first stop, or even serious slowdown, in the entire 2,000-mile trip.

I stopped for gas and knew this would be a record. It was, with a fill-up coming in just under $120. Washington has the highest gas in the nation right now. I start considering what it might have been like to move out here with the Beetle rather than the truck. Certainly much less stuff to load and unload.

Downtown Tacoma offers steep hills – practically San Francisco-level grade. We found our Airbnb, the place we have booked for the first month. The plan was to find a year-long lease this month. But Ann’s mother had texted us a Zillow link to a place on the water available for a reasonable rate. “Reasonable” and “on the water” don’t typically belong in the same sentence anywhere in the United States, so we looked at the ad carefully. The first strike was it was only a six-month lease, so we would be on the water for the half of the year that the water is whole lot less appealing. The second strike was that getting to the house involved going down a staircase of 220+ stairs.

Those were two pretty big strikes, but we didn’t have any other plans that weekend and thought it would be fun to look it, so we called and set up a time.

The house was built on pilings, in a community of about 80 similar houses. The shoreline is a several-hundred-acre city park that everyone says feels more like a National Park. As I was walking down the steps, I was thinking, “Oliver (my son) is going to be so mad at us if we don’t take this.” He’s all about adventure. The house and homeowner sold themselves. We left knowing we wanted it. The owner said two other people were interested, but I think Ann made a good impression, because the next day, we got it.

We now had six-months of accommodations lined up quicker than anticipated, but it wouldn’t be available until Nov. 15. So we now had a month to find another place to stay for a month. Our first stay, which we had spent all of one night in, was nice. It was a block off of Wright Park, a central city park with an arboretum. I contacted the Airbnd host about extending our stay at a discount. They said they weren’t managing it anymore after we left. I found it listed by another manager, for about $2,000 a month more than we were paying. A little back and forth didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, so we kept looking elsewhere, even though the kitchen came with this really trick bird. 

If you're wondering about its function, it's filled with Keurig pods. 

If you’re interested in seeing pics of where we’re living this first month, there are good ones in their listing here https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1483523427843329582?guests=1&adults=1&s=67&unique_share_id=87f4f893-c5fe-44b3-ba45-279b6a968360.