Ultimate Dodge Ball

Oh Yeah!

We went to Absolute Air Trampoline Park in Arlington today. It was totally awesome! A giant warehouse with 3 large trampoline areas where you can bounce into a big foam pit, do stunts by bouncing across the floor then off the walls, or play a game of Ultimate dodgeball on trampolines!

Ezzy played dodgeball for 3 hours and was in heaven. We went there with some new friends for a birthday party. It's not close. It requires a ferry ride and about 2 hours of driving to get there but it was totally worth it! We left at about 11 AM and didn't get back to our little r-pod until after 10 PM. Quite a day...

J

Better Living Through Coffee

Spent a slow morning over coffee and cookies. Just snapped a couple of pics of my boys hanging out at Better Living Through Coffee. This is a great local coffee shop in Port Townsend owned and operated by some new friends who live over at Rose Wind Cohousing.

Ezzy is doing his best impersonation of "Christopher Robin". I'm not sure who Levon is supposed to be. I don't remember a raccoon in "Winnie the Pooh".

J

Indianola and Trilium Sudbury

Today we visited the Trillium Sudbury in Indianola, took a quick side trip back over to Bainbridge Island and had a wonderful dinner in the common house over at Wise Acres Cohousing. It was a busy day! It was a very rare, warm day with the sun shining and no rain in sight.

The Trillium school is awesome. Ezzy and Levon got right to work playing with a bunch of new friends. Some of whom live at Wise Acres Cohousing so the play extended well into the night. Ezzy said this was one of his favorite days up here so far. Levon definitely had fun as he barely made it out of the driveway at Wise Acres before he was sound asleep.

Bainbridge was very nice and we'll undoubtedly make it back down there for another, longer visit. I think we have plans next week to have dinner at Winslow Cohousing. We're meeting a ton of very nice and very cool folks up here.

J

Trip to Bellingham

We woke up this morning to a snowstorm. No really, it was coming down like crazy. None of it stuck and it only lasted about 30 minutes, but it was heavy and looked really cool.

We headed out for Bellingham which is a 30 minute ferry ride and about 50 miles north of where you disembark in Coupeville. The boys were pretty excited to be driving onto a ferry for the first time. It was actually my first time on a large ferry as well, so I guess I was equally excited.

We headed North on State Hwy. 20 and it was beautiful and sunny. We drove through some absolutely gorgeous countryside and quaint little towns. The view when you cross over the bridge at Cape Deception is the stuff of postcards.

About 10 minutes out of Bellingham we hit more snow... the weather and sky here is so dynamic. This is one of those places where if you don't like the weather, just give it 15 minutes and it will change. Again the snow was coming down like mad, but ran it's course in 30 minutes and you could hardly tell it ever happened at all.

Drove like crazy to catch the 4:30 ferry back. If you miss it, it's an hour and a half wait for the next. We made it on with minutes to spare... All in all, a very fun adventure today and something the boys will remember for a long time.

More pics here: Ferry to Bellingham

J

Port Angeles and Sequim

Took a little day-trip to Port Angeles today. We heard there was a Farmer's Market and were curious to check out another area up here. PA has a very large commercial port and the surrounding area is pretty industrial.

The Farmers Market was kind of a bust. Very small, about 8 vendors in a small transit center. Oh yea, and the temp was somewhere between freezing and Antarctica. We spent about 5 minutes at the market, just enough time for me to get a very yummy pork tamale.

On the way back we stopped off in Sequim and found some amazing countryside and a great campground in Dungeness Bay. While driving around we actually spotted a bald eagle sitting in a field. Never seen one of those in the wild! It's hard to get any info on population numbers. I looked all over the internet, but most of the info is a few years old. I was able to find out that they are still considered a "threatened" species here in Washington, but quite a number of them winter around the Puget Sound area.

We also discovered a couple of wild kite surfers in their natural habitat. one thing this area has a lot of is wind and water.

J

More Port Townsend

Well we've been here for about a week and we're currently renting a little cabin at North Beach near Fort Worden. It's just a couple miles out of town and very quiet.

We visited with the very nice folks over at Rosewind cohousing last Thursday evening for their potluck dinner. I insisted we bring "meat" lasagna, good thing since everything else was veggie. Do I know cohousing communities or what...

We spent the afternoon exploring Fort Worden park which is right next next door to where we're staying. There are dozens of old artillery batteries located around the edge of the water and on top of the hills. Really fun places for the boys to explore. Next time we're bringing a flashlight as there are a lot of very dark rooms buried deep in the hillside we want to check out.

Here's a link to more pics:

OurLifeUncommon-photobucket

J

Port Townsend

We've been in Port Townsend now for a couple of days. I misplaced my cable to the digital camera so I have not been able to post to the blog for almost a week, so I'm trying to catch up this morning.

It's been cold and wet... It rained all last night and we're going to go check out some potential rentals today. We've been having fun but four of us living in what amounts to about 85 square feet is starting to feel a little cramped. It's too cold to open up the pop-out bed and too wet to set up the outside screen room/awning.

Yesterday was pretty nice. we walked around the very quaint downtown area, had some coffee at one of about 20 little coffee houses, went out for pizza and had a fun time at a chinese restaurant for dinner.

J

Eureka! We found a Denny's…

Well we left Ukiah this morning having spent the night in our deluxe Walmart parking lot campsite. It was bright and sunny, and we we're heading North into a rainstorm.

At lunch-time we found ourselves cruising through the armpit of Eureka CA. Now I say "armpit" with some hesitation, as I might be offending actual armpits everywhere. We looked for a little mom and pop burger place called "Deluxe Burger" suggested by our iphone, but it seems "Deluxe" was now "defunct".

Our search did turn up a Denny's. Not that any of us are big fans of Denny's, but at least it's a safe bet. Clean, well maintained, friendly and a broad selection of hideous sounding "scrambles" and "tangles" overly-cooked and swimming in a sweet greasy goo. On this point, the food did not disappoint. But the Eureka Denny's has got to be the most run-down, filthy-stepchild of the entire Denny's empire. I felt like I needed a shower and a bucket after we left. We can scratch Denny's off our list of things to do on this trip.

As the sun was going down we rolled into Grant Pass Oregon and found an RV park called "Joe Creek Waterfall RV Resort". We're going to take a walk in the morning to see the waterfall at "Jumpoff Joe Creek". It got it's name in the mid 1800's when "Joe" was being chased by a band of Indians and came to the bluff overlooking the falls. His friends yelled, "jump off Joe!" which he did. The indians didn't get him, but the fall did… No cliff diving for us I guess.

J

Discovery Museum

Kids had a great time checking out the Bay Discovery Museum. Lots of really cool stuff to climb on and explore. Too many pictures to even include. The willow sculpture/house was totally awesome. I want to make one of these someday. Ezzy and Levon made a cool fort out of these big blue foam blocks.

We're heading North to Ukiah or Willits. Then tomorrow hopefully we'll be in Oregon!

J

Golden Gate Bridge

Spent the afternoon hiking and picnicking in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was an unusually warm and clear day in Sausalito and we took advantage of what will most likely be the last warm and clear day for a while. The weather forecast called for rain and possibly even some snow along our route over the next 3 days.

We hiked up to Yates Battery and explored the old concrete artillery bunkers that guarded the bay from enemy attacks during WWII. Cool stuff, but everything was welded shut so all we could do was walk around on top of the ramparts and imagine what it would be like to operate those six 3" cannons that once served as the explosive deterrent to the Red scourge of Communisim!

I'm so glad socialism has prevailed.

J

Ovo

We had a blast at the Cirque do Soliel show!!

The boys loved it and Paula said she was almost in tears a couple of times at how amazing the performers were. You're not allowed to take any photos during the show, so I borrowed a couple from the internet.

This was a very good day.

J

Santa Monica Pier

Just a quick post since I'm a couple days behind. We drove up to the Santa Monica Pier on Saturday to play for a few hours while we waited for the Cirque du Soliel show to start. We all had fun, ate bad food and played some carnival games. I remember being here back in the '80's when it was just a run down derelict pier and the old carousel was boarded up and falling to pieces. Much nicer now.

J