Ruby Beach, WA

August 12, 2013August 12, 2013 ~ Crystle ~ 9 Comments

Spontaneity is not lost on us, I’m happy to report. After lamenting all the lost travel opportunities in Washington that we are up against, we decided to pick a couple locales and go for it.

Highest on the wish list was a camping trip to the Olympic National Park, but you’d need to reserve a campsite months in advance; an impossibility since we weren’t sure how difficult life with a newborn would be. Travelers come from all around the world to camp in the old-growth rain forests and backpack in the steep mountains of the sprawling park. Steep cliffs? River crossings? Snowy trails? Ai, ai, ai, not with a baby.

So, a day hike: the perfect solution for a young family. We chose Ruby Beach, because it was the closest in scenery to the Giants Graveyard, which is what we really wanted to see. Doing so meant we would have had to check tide charts and risk a rocky traverse across a receding shoreline with a baby in a day pack. I was particularly keen on seeing a foggy seascape, freckled with sea stacks– from a safe vantage point. Overly-cautious mom reigns in the adventure, again.

Visibility maxed out at one mile, so the highly-anticipated infinity horizon of the Pacific Ocean was a no-show.

Fog obscured the tree-tops while a cool, misty breeze reminded us that the ocean churned nearby. Driftwood and boulders, littered with Cairns, dotted the shoreline.

From a wind-swept branch high above the cove, a bald eagle sat, calmly watching the shoreline (can you find him in the following photograph?).

Landscapes like this are a dime a dozen along the Oregon and Washington Coast. For however long, or short we live in this region, the novelty of such beauty will never wear off.

Margot + Bananas

August 10, 2013August 10, 2013 ~ Crystle ~ 3 Comments

Margot - Five Months | Yea Yea Pueblo

We couldn’t ask for more when it comes to our baby girl. Margot is healthy, easy-going, and beautiful. She’s hitting all her baby milestones rather early and our job as parents has been as smooth as silk. At her four month appointment, her pediatrician approved a slowly-integrated menu of solids, a welcome change.

Margot - Five Months Old | Yea Yea Pueblo

Margot - Five Months | Yea Yea Pueblo

While I was still pregnant, my sister-in-law Anna and her fiancè Jonathan were gracious enough to gift us the Baby Bullet to help our transition into solids further down the line. It sat on the shelf until this glorious day when Margot was finally ready to sample solids.

Of course I was there with my Canon, ready to document the auspicious occasion.

We pureèd bananas with water and hoped for the best, and the best it was. Margot absolutely loved her soupy bananas, and grabbed for more any time the spoon was in her reach. It was adorably messy and incredibly time consuming.

Bottles feed her much quicker, but we all seem to enjoy the novelty of a new phase.
Margot - Five Months | Yea Yea Pueblo

To bring her into the world was amazing enough, but to see her eventually initiate tummy time on her own and unsteadily hold her head up by herself–that was inconceivable! Now she can sit up and eat semi-solids. We are but quieted wallflowers. Our Margot is growing up in a flash and there is nothing we can do to reel it in. Her teeth are coming in! She loves bananas! She loves Radiohead lullabies! She giggles and crawls after our elderly Beagle, Yango. With every new day of life she becomes more animated.

Is there anything else to do but resign ourselves to the inevitability of growth? But I suppose, as she grows, we do too. Vicariously and metaphorically.

Margot - Five Months | Yea Yea Pueblo

We were lucky enough

Bird Watching at the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge

August 4, 2013August 4, 2013 ~ Crystle ~ 6 Comments

With only five weeks left here in Washington, it looks like we won’t be able to kick off all the items on our Pacific Northwest Bucket List. There is only so much you can get done on the weekends, especially with a baby. To our credit, it was a pretty long list, and we got most of it done.

At this point, priorities on our to-do list have changed. We hired a property management company to rent out our home, had movers survey our belongings to ensure a smooth moving day, and bought a trailer to haul behind our Subaru so we can have a little bit of home with us when we arrive in Alaska. I won’t go more than two weeks without my kitchen stuff, and with having a baby and a dog comes lots of extra gear. When did we become so conventional?

In an effort to savor the scenery of the South Puget Sound, we went down into the valley outside of our neighborhood to tour the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. It’s a shame we hadn’t done it sooner.

The Refuge is nestled in a fertile valley where the coniferous rainforest meets South Puget Sound. From this place, when visibility allows, the snow-capped mountains of the Olympic National Park jut into the sky across the water, and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge spans the aquatic horizon to the north.

Rain or shine, birds skim the surface of the water, while jellyfish float gently below. The salty breeze carries waterfowl, sandpipers, hawks and kingfishers over the delta where bird watchers and their telescopes collect like barnacles.

At this particular refuge, a boardwalk two miles long, takes tourists out over the water to get a better view of the birds that frequent the shallow waters.

European Starlings, Canadian Geese, Blue Herons, and Great Egrets freckled the delta, while Sharp-shinned Hawks soared above. Bunnies hopped across walking paths, then disappeared under the ferns while Morning Doves feasted nearby on Wild Blackberries.

It was lovely to see them all independent of one another and not actively demonstrating their roles in the food chain.