We're on our way!

We closed up the Pied-a-Mer and started our big trip today. Our first destination? West Seattle! Yes, the first leg of our journey was just a ten-mile bus ride. This may be the best decision we've made so far. Our flight to Minneapolis doesn't leave until tomorrow morning, but we were anxious to get started and this made for a much more relaxed departure from the houseboat. We're spending our first night with friends in West Seattle, who treated us to a wonderful dinner, and we had a fun game of Scrabble.

All packed and ready to go

Locking up the boat

Our good friends at the dock gave us a warm send-off

Before we left, several friends had us over for a  meal, and my hiking group gave Les and me a wonderful going-away party. One of the Trekkers wrote this poem for the occasion:

Your bags are all packed.
Your belongings are stacked.
Round the world you will go
Speaking Esperanto.
Just be sure, very sure to come back.

Yesterday we took our car to a friend's place in Bellevue and left it in her garage. We disconnected the battery and put fuel stabilizer in the gas tank. When we went to lock the doors with our remote, we were surprised that it didn't work. Duh, we had disconnected the car's battery, right?

Today we prepared the Pied-a-Mer for leaving it unoccupied for the next four and a half months. We turned off the heat, disconnected the water, shut off the propane, turned off the fridge after giving away all our unused food, serviced the composting toilet, and removed batteries from the smoke alarms (so a possible low battery alarm wouldn't annoy the neighbors).

The end of our first day, as seen from our friends' house in West Seattle:
the sun setting behind the Olympics in the background, Bremerton ferry in the foreground.

We're looking forward to the days, weeks, and months to come. If you'd like to be notified of future blog articles, sign up in the sidebar to the right. This sidebar also has links to archived articles, and a link to our itinerary. Send me an email if you have trouble getting these features to work.

Portland

We're back from our second and last "shakedown cruise", so to speak. This was a 9-day trip to Portland. We stayed in the condo of my high school friend, who lives in New Jersey but keeps the condo for when she visits her grandchildren in Portland (and generously lets her friends use it). The condo was quite luxurious, yet very homey, and in a good location near the Rose Garden and Nob Hill neighborhood. We enjoyed meeting my friend's son, his wife, and young twin boys, all for the very first time.

The tulips were blooming early this year

The only outdoor municipal elevator in the country
connects the upper and lower parts of Oregon City

At the weekly meeting of the Oregon Esperanto group, everybody was
looking up the translation of an obscure word on their various gadgets

There were many wood ducks at the rhododendron garden

Over the years we've probably been to Portland at least a dozen times, but during our seven days we managed to find a lot of places that were new to us: Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, Reed College campus, Oregon City, Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm in Woodburn, OMSI (science center), Railway Heritage Center, Hoyt Arboretum, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Audubon center, Lan Su Chinese Garden, and Bob's Red Mill factory tour in Milwaukee. We attended the weekly meeting of the Portland Esperanto group. We walked for miles on most days, on both trails and city streets. We went on every mile of the various streetcar lines.

The tour at Bob's Red Mill was very interesting, but photos
of the production line were not permitted

Mill Ends Park is the smallest park in the world,
according to the Guinness Book of Records

We drove to Portland the fast way, stopping at Nisqually Delta and the Discovery Historic Loop Trail in Vancouver. After our week in Portland we spent a night at the Flying L Ranch near Mt. Adams. Coincidentally it was Easter weekend, so we participated in a potluck dinner there Saturday evening. We drove on a wonderful scenic road from Glenwood to Goldendale, up to Yakima, and the back roads around Umtanum Ridge, before heading home.

Our lodge in Glenwood had a view of Mt. Adams

It was a fabulous week. Les wrote to his sister on the fifth day: "Having a fantastic time in Portland. Have lost track of time. Haven't felt so free and independent in my whole life. It's exhilarating!" His two favorite experiences on the trip were: (1) meditating in the Chinese Garden during a rainstorm (see previous blog entry), and (2) being lost on the back roads near Umtanum.

In preparation for the big trip, we experimented with Dropbox for storing our documents and photos in "the cloud". It worked out very well. And since Pandora doesn't work outside the U.S., we tried using YouTube for background music. Once we figure out how to avoid annoying ads and mid-stream interruptions, it might be a reasonable substitute for Pandora. The real problem, though, will be the lack of decent loudspeakers.

Even with one block missing, Les was able to construct an arch bridge at OMSI