Glacier National Park--Montana

Even though it's been almost a month since our visit to Glacier, thought I'd post some pics and tell you a little about our time there. Have to admit it was hard to pick which pics to post since there were so many good ones, that's my excuse for procrastination anyway. So these are all from the area of Glacier Park called Many Glacier. The glacial lakes are a stunning shade of blue! Unfortunately, we didn't make it here until the last day and liked it so much we added another day in a cabin with no bathroom (this was only for 1 night though and the bathrooms were super close, not a big deal at all). The other parts of the park pale in comparison and don't seem like they should be part of Glacier Nat'l Park.

While still in Yellowstone, we heard about the fires at Glacier and were wondering if we'd have to cut our trip short. Upon arrival, the fires really limited visibility but on the higher hikes you couldn't tell as much and on the bright side, it made for killer sunsets. The famous Going to the Sun road was gorgeous with views of huge cliff drops and stunning scenery some of which was obscured due to the fires. We also saw quite a lot of wildlife here too: mountain goats, bighorn sheep, bear cubs way off in the distance (binoculars and others helped us to see this) and my favorite: a female moose literally 10 feet away eating. And was she ever noisy! Then she crossed right in front of our path. I didn't want to tear myself away but Ryan had to get a picture of me, isn't my expression hysterical?

The best hike I've ever done (even including boonie stomps) was up to Grinnell Glacier, the most "accessible" glacier in the US. It was 6 miles uphill! And every step kept getting better and better: trail switchbacks, dramatic scenery changes, and walking through a waterfall. There were bighorn sheep all over and marmots too. The way down was another story, my knees were killing me so much that the next day I couldn't hike :-(. Good thing there was a boat so we saved ourselves about a mile walking back.

Overall, I was very impressed with Montana. The people are liberal and laid back. We went to a bunch of independent little restaurants and coffee shops in Whitefish, Kalispell, and Missoula. Our very last day we went to Canada as the land from Glacier abuts their national park, called Waterton. It was very interesting explaining to Canadian customs that we're moving from Mississippi to Seattle and stopping for a daytrip to Canada, ha. Great way to end our national parks trip and head to real life in Seattle.....

Our offer was.....

....accepted!! So pending inspection and closing, we'll move in September 21st!! Only 1 more month in the Extended Stay..... Now we have time to have fun in Seattle!!

The quaint, charming, cozy (i.e. small) house is 2 bedroom/1 bath in the Green Lake area, an almost 3 mile hike and bike path with easy access to the freeway. The best part is we'll be within walking distance to 3! Thai restaurants, at least 1 local coffee shop, a brew pub or two, and even a Whole Foods. It feels like Europe to us! There's potential to add on another bathroom and spruce up the kitchen. I'll send pics soon.....

Progress on the house search

After seeing at least 30 properties ranging from tiny condos with city and water views to run-down houses in sketchy neighborhoods, we found a cute house and made an offer last night! Don't worry, it's not in a sketchy neighborhood!! Now, I'm waiting (not so patiently) to hear back if the sellers will accept it. This whole process has been all-encompassing, not to mention exhausting learning the real estate lingo as well as trying to figure out the 'hoods we like the best. We've been told to expect a counter-offer but we're planning to hold firm with our offer of $5,000 under list price.... I won't describe it just yet in case we can't come to mutual acceptance--new term for me. Keep your fingers crossed!

Road rage and watermelons?!

So, I have to say besides being yelled at once by a driver for putting on my blinker when I shouldn't have, I've been pleasantly surprised in the fairly courteous way people drive here. Typically, someone will eventually let you in if you signal. However, this was not the case yesterday afternoon driving around with my real estate agent. She was trying to get over into the left hand turning lane from the right lane and had her blinker on for a while. She gunned it to get over (and later tells me the car was 2 car lengths back so she didn't feel that she cut him off too badly, if at all). The car, which she may or may not have cut off, pulls up right beside me on the passenger side and screams at Leslie and says, What are you doing? She says sorry. He says I have kids in the car. Leslie says sorry again. The passenger in the front seat throws a watermelon across the driver and it lands splat, at my window!! I jump and the guy tears off. We are both shaken up and marvel at what just happened. What anger! Nice lesson to teach your kids, dude. And what a waste of a perfectly good watermelon. Have you ever heard of such a thing? The splattered fruit was all over the car, on the top and the windshield as well. Leslie then tells me that I'll notice drivers in Seattle are angry. I have noticed how centered everyone is about traffic but this is just odd! And a poll back in April or May said for cities, Seattle had some of the most friendly drivers. Apparently that poll did not take into account this super angry guy!

Houseless in Seattle

Still no luck on the housing front after a good week plus of searching. We've got a good real estate agent who keeps telling me not to get antsy. Easy for her to say, she's not living in an Extended Stay! Honestly, it's not too bad but after months of living out of suitcases, I'm ready to be in my own place. There might be one possibility, I'll keep you posted....

Almost 2 weeks in Seattle and I can not complain (well, except for my watermelon story). The weather is so different from what I'm used to in the summer: 70s and clear. Today, Pike Place Market turns 100! Visited a farmer's market yesterday for organic fruits and veggies all locally grown. These people are into the environment and dogs big time!! Another interesting thing I've noticed are the teriyaki restaurants in practically every strip mall/intersection. Heard there are over 100 teriyaki joints and only 12 McDonald's in Seattle proper, my kind of place! Ryan was disappointed in this fact, ha. So you'd think with a health conscious population that dietitian jobs would be plentiful, not so. I've only been able to find 2 openings. Hmmm, is it career change time? I could handle health or travel writing or even blogging.

Went to a Mariners game Monday night at Safeco Field: what a stadium! I'm not into baseball but I might become a fan going to games here. We met Ryan's cousin, Gabe, and some of his friends pre-game at the Pyramid Ale House right across from the stadium and later enjoyed an $8 beer in the stadium with a great crowd and wonderful sunset! The Mariners even won with a bottom of the 9th homerun! So much to do here, I can get used to this....

The West (Left) Coast

We're enjoying the more liberal side of the US so far---couldn't tell you how many Impeach Bush signs we've seen! Also the sheer amount of Asian restaurants is amazing--went to the International District for Vietnamese food and durian (the stinky fruit that's not allowed in hotels in Thailand) was on the menu and in the farmers' market. Seattleites don't mess around with their food!!

On the housing front, we've decided against a temporary furnished apartment and plan to make the Extended Stay our home for a while. Our work with a real estate agent to find the perfect home won't come cheap, we are in major sticker shock!! From what we've seen in our price range in Seattle proper, we can afford a fixer-upper in an ok location. Read: potential if you're handy, which we're not so the debate goes on. Should we buy a brand new fully loaded townhome in a good fun area or a small house in an up and coming neighborhood that needs work??

In between house hunting, we met up with a friend from Guam, Amy, whose family lives close by. And I got to see Ryan's new work digs. It took us double the time that it needed to as we mistakenly got on the freeway and didn't need to do! Embarassingly enough, his work is right off of the street where our hotel is!! Just shows you we don't have a good handle on where stuff is. Seattle has been confusing for us to get around as we're staying on the east side so always have to cross a floating bridge so we've been rewarded with gorgeous water views. We even saw Mt. Rainier one day. I have to brag that the weather has been really nice this first week, not the first thing you think to say of Seattle. It's cool and not humid, plus we haven't seen rain yet:-)

Yellowstone Nat'l Park

Here are some pics from our 3 days here: the first is from the Geyser part of the park. This portion of the park seemed so otherworldly: like Mars with water!! Of course, had to see Old Faithful and it wasn't the biggest or best geyser but it did erupt as predicted unlike the Riverside Geyser which we waited for almost an hour in the rain, I might add! The geysers stink like rotten eggs due to the sulfur, couldn't wait to shower.... Other cool features were the mud pots, loved their splattering!

The second day we spent around the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone area, lots of waterfalls too....really gorgeous, how Yellowstone got its' name (2nd pic). We saw the most wildlife this day as well....grizzly bear with 2 cubs!!!, 2 bald eagles and a baby, bear tracks on a hike, and a huge herd of buffalo crossing the road. In fact, 1 buffalo hit a car very close to us, road rage??? Crazy enough the best wildlife was not on any of our daily hikes but from the road. As we are not adept at wildlife spotting we relied on other cars parking and assumed it was a sighting, which almost always worked.

So here's my "scary" buffalo story. We sought out an area that was known to have bears, I was nervous and was using the park ranger's advice of making loud noises, etc. Well, of course, we didn't see any bears but there was a huge herd of buffalo way off in the distance. It was about 3 miles across a meadow and forested area when we came upon this herd on the trail (see last pic). They were loud, the males were grunting but they weren't agitated as their tails weren't sticking way up. I was getting nervous anyway but not Ryan. We were just hanging out in their territory for a while and they kept grunting and looking at us, I just couldn't take it much longer. I am most definitely a city slicker.

Overall, really enjoyed Yellowstone. We stayed in West Yellowstone, Montana, a 5 min. drive to the park (which is in Wyoming). Just the driving to hikes was scenic and wildlife was spotted. It'd be fun to go back and visit with friends/family!! Out of all of the parks we visited, it had the most to offer even if it was a bit crowded in certain places.

We're "home"

We finally arrived in the Emerald City (didn't know Seattle is called this) yesterday afternoon!!!! The 4 hour drive from Spokane made for a huge scenery change. The plains of eastern Washington look like Nebraska, I swear. But then we crossed the Cascade Mountains and over a canyon/gorge (who knew?) into the Seattle area. It was sunny on the eastern side; the clouds look like they couldn't make it over the mountains into Seattle. It's 60 degrees here!!

Today begins the most unknown question of all: where to live? We're armed with Sunday's classified ads and some internet resources. We'll be scoping out different neighborhoods to choose our fav area.

On a food note, there's a Whole Foods just down the street from our hotel, already loaded up. And our first meal consisted of Thai food; there are Asian restaurants everywhere, I'm in heaven! This is a far cry from Columbus, Mississippi.....

Grand Tetons--Jackson Hole, Wyoming

I don't know if it was because Grand Tetons was the first of the national parks but it was jaw dropping beautiful with its' huge peaks and glacial waters. The first day we took a boat to Jenny Lake and then hiked to Inspiration Point where we saw our first moose in the (very large) flesh! The downside was there were a ton of people on this hike so the next day we went on a quieter trail and were rewarded with this view!!! Unfortunately, I got burned badly and also messed up my knee--old high school track/soccer injury so I've been icing ever since.

Just driving to these hikes we saw wildlife like elk, deer, and my new favorite: buffalo!! (Stay tuned for my buffalo encounter pic/story in Yellowstone post.)

We stayed in Teton Village, a ski resort village in a hotel called Hostelx. It definitely felt like a hostel and was priced accordingly. This should have been my first clue but we couldn't pass up this deal. We had our own dimly lit room with 4 bunkbeds but after 2 nights of near sleeplessness and hearing actual conversations through the walls even with ear plugs, we left a day early and headed to Yellowstone. Of course, this didn't bother Ryan...how aggravating:-)

Anyway, I loved everything about Jackson Hole except our lodging...even had organic deli/general store....right up my alley. Also drove through Jackson and ate at a great little restaurant for breakfast on Bon Appetit's top 10 places to eat breakfast in the country! And I thought they'd only have steak and potatoes in this part of the country! (Knew I'd add some food comments in there, didn't you? )

Back to "civilization"

After almost 2 weeks in the national parks hiking our butts off and seeing much wildlife, we are back in the land of Starbucks and cell phone service. We are finally in Washington....Spokane, not Seattle yet. We extended our trip by 1 day in Glacier. Had a great time overall...will post a little blurb and picture on each of the 3 parks in the next couple of days. Not having internet for a week was harder than I thought it'd be!!! No tv, on the other hand, was very nice....

Tomorrow we'll arrive in the Seattle area, living at an Extended Stay hotel close to Ryan's work until we can find a furnished apartment, at least that's the plan for now..... We'll be in touch..... Can't wait to hear what's going on with you!