Midwest2Westcoast

The night before Thanksgiving when we had about a dozen family members at the house Oliver made us all fish sandwiches out of snook he caught back in August while working at Everglades National Park. One more time and it will be locked in as a tradition. Last year, he made pre-Thanksgiving fish sandwiches out of catfish he caught in the Missouri River. We all remember those as being the best fish sandwiches we ever had. We also all agreed that the snook sandwiches this year were even better than last year’s catfish. The summer fish supply was a bit depleted, though, so to ensure we had more food than 12 people could possibly eat, he supplemented the meal with venison burgers from a deer that he harvested. The burgers were topped with cheese that Ann made from a cow she milked herself at The Mother Farm, www.themotherfarm.org . The choice between the burgers and fish sandwiches was too difficult, so I had both. Although it wasn’t apparent in the previous post or the first part of th...

Please pardon the momentary pause in my reports from Pierce County in order to have you journey with me back to Missouri. We’ve hosted Ann’s family every Easter and Thanksgiving since buying the house in Columbia in 2000, and upon making plans to move to Tacoma this year, we pledged to keep up the tradition for this Thanksgiving. Flying over Thanksgiving isn’t just hectic – it’s expensive. And Ann doesn’t have time off yet. However, since she was working remotely, she was able to complete that work from Missouri for a few days. And I’m also working remotely, but since my employer is based out of Columbia it was double-ok for me to come back. Therefore, rather than flying Wednesday through Sunday, we tagged on a few more days to bring the price of plane tickets down out of the stratosphere. Flying out of SeaTac was fine. I’ve been in much busier airports, and there seemed to be much more TSA personnel on hand than needed to keep things running smoothly. No problems with the 20-minut...

  Month one in Tacoma we got in the habit of doing a lunch-hour run in the lovely Stadium and Old Town neighborhoods, including a little trail running. Month two in Elbe was mostly running old logging roads, with an occasional horse trail or hiking trail mixed in. The new place, Salmon Beach, isn’t just on the water, it's also in Point Defiance Park, the crown jewel of the Tacoma park system. It’s an old-growth forest with giant trees. There is a historic Fort Nisqually living history site I’ve passed by but haven’t stopped in at yet. There’s a very large off-leash dog area right next to where we live that includes a lot of woods, unlike many dog parks that are just a patch of grass. There’s also a marina, an aquarium and zoo that I haven’t even seen. The park is something like 700 acres, and has a road called 5-Mile Road that encircles it. It also has a lot of trails. We dove in on our first run without much of a plan and got lost, making the run considerably longer than intended....

This is a picture from our deck at sunset. This is what you are looking at from our kitchen, living room and bedroom.  Before you pack your bags and move out here, I'm obligated to share this video, which shows the walk from my back porch up to the parking lot where we keep our truck. 

  I’ll give you a little preview of where we are currently. It’s called Salmon Beach. It’s a little community of something like 80 houses built out on the water in Puget Sound. By on the water, I mean all of our houses are on piers. At high tide, there’s water under my house. There’s always water under my deck. We have the place on a six-month lease. The owner is a lovely lady who has lived here 10 years, but this winter she’s going to a house she bought on the coast of Mexico, living in an Airstream trailer while the house is being remodeled. She warned us that it’s rainy here in the winter and the days are short, but we’re up for it. Salmon Beach is part of Point Defiance Park. We haven’t really explored it yet. More to come. 

  I’ll give you a quick catch-up on life outside of weekend hiking and the Monday to Friday, 8-5 remote work… our exciting social life, which has been very closely tied to Ann’s vocation, although I’m interested in saving the planet, too, so it works for both of us. If you’re a regular reader, you may recall that last month’s Green Drinks was at the Mule Tavern in South Tacoma. This month, it was at Dahlman Cellars, a wine shop less than a block from where we used to live on 2 nd Street. The keynote speaker was Sarah Sutton, co-founder and CEO of Environment and Culture Partners. Sarah’s main thing is helping museums adopt sustainable practices. She’s written a couple of books about this. As a keynote speaker, she gave a brief talk and then had us play Tringo, a combination of trivia and bingo. She would ask a question and the answer may be on our Bingo card. And to be kind, after people had an opportunity to shout out the answer, she told us the correct answer anyway so peopl...

  This blog post is being brought to you by Elon Musk. He’s not paying me or anything. I wouldn’t expect him to do that. Cybertruck sales are disappointing, and although he’s the richest man in the world, I think he expected to be whole lot richer than he actually is. It’s Elon satellites that are bringing you this blog. During the pandemic, I was at the True False Festival at Columbia, shifted outside in a well-intended but ill-fated move. During one of the moments that it wasn’t raining, I saw a row of blinking lights slowly marching across the sky like a line of ants. It was like nothing I had seen before, and it was unsettling. Then I remembered having read about these low-orbit communication satellites being deployed en masse to provide Internet all over. I wasn’t so sure it was the best idea. When I booked this Airbnb, with Ann and I both working remotely, reliable high-speed Internet was critical. Right in the listing, the host said, “We have Starlink Internet, so there’s ne...

We learned after the first attempt to get to Paradise that if you want to know if the road will be open or not, check the webcams at https://www.nps.gov/mora/learn/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm . If the roads are clear and there are cars in the parking lot – go for it, you’re golden. If you can’t see the roads or the parking lot because everything is white, you’re going to be waiting until next weekend.   On our third weekend here, the gate was finally open, so we drove to Paradise, not once but twice. On Saturda,y it was a rainy adventure. We had the place to ourselves, but barely got out of the car. The visitors' center is a beautiful, enormous building, and the concessionaire had the dining area and the gift shop open. But the display area of the visitor center had a little sawhorse in front of it that said it was closed due to the government shutdown. Likewise, they weren’t showing the informational movie in the theater. That seemed a little petty, but we were glad to have som...

 Twice we tried to get to Paradise. Twice we were denied. But the good thing about Paradise is that even when you can’t quite get there, the Paradise suburbs are pretty nice, too. We set out to drive to Paradise on the first weekend we were living at Elbe, knowing that the road might close early in the winter due to snow. Too late – we were met with a closed gate at Longmire. Although it was only rainy there, Paradise was snow-covered and the federal government shutdown had left the National Park Service with limited staff to deal with the roads. We settled for the little Twin Firs loop mentioned in a previous post. The following weekend the same thing happened, but this time we were better dressed so we braved the chilly, rainy weather and set out on the Wonderland Trail. The few miles we hiked were well-maintained. There was a neat log bridge across the river. It didn’t seem all that high off the water line, and we wondered why it didn’t wash out. We continued on to Carter F...

We recently spent a Saturday planting trees in a ditch filled with blackberry briars with on-and-off rain throughout the day. But it was fun, due to the fact that great people were running the show and volunteering. Ann mentioned that in Missouri the event would have been called off for rain, and these people didn’t seem to notice, or at least didn’t think the rain was worth mentioning. To top it off, it happened to be in the fantastic town of Wilkeson ( https://www.townofwilkeson.com/ ). We started out meeting in the Simple Goodness Soda Shop, ( https://www.simplegoodnesssodashop.com/about ). Coffee, ice cream, cocktails, hot food and soda I suppose. I didn’t have any soda but can personally attest to the fact that they do everything else with a very high standard of excellence. We ended the day by gathering at Carlson Block ( https://www.carlsonblock.com/ ) another main street business in a historic building. I was told their wood-fired pizza oven was imported from Italy. If tha...

  “I hear the train a-comin', it's rolling 'round the bend And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when…” – Johnny Cash The hiking in the mountains, the walks in the park, going to the beach, even the art museum all had one important thing in common: they were free. Recently, Ann and I engaged in our first paid intentional entertainment activity, riding a train to nowhere. From our isolated home in the woods, you can hear a lonely whistle blow a few times a night, about three nights a week. It’s quite melodic. The train is well out of sight, some distance away, and on the other side of many trees, but its sound fills our house in a pleasant and peaceful way. It’s more like some kind of woodwind instrument than an alarm. We had to get closer, and the boarding station was a mere two miles away. The Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad https://mtrainierrailroad.com/ runs daily through the tourist season, but this time of year it is weekends-only for its Hallow...