We stayed in what was advertised as an adult treehouse. It wasn't. It was just an A-frame lake house that happened to be on stilts. But it was still incredibly nice.
We had this view from the kitchen, not too shabby.
We had so much fun driving from Seattle to Portland last year that we planned a casual road trip. One where we don't have to actually be anywhere at a certain time so that if we wanted to pull off the road to see the worlds largest ball of yarn, we could.
We left Friday morning after Thanksgiving, getting on the road somewhere around 8-8:30 AM. Sometimes I forget not every highway is like 70/170/270. 44 outside of St. Louis is an easy ride. Rarely was I finding both lanes plugged up with slow moving trucks. I didn't see any cops. It was a nice ride in the sunshine, listening to podcasts.
It's very rare that I find myself with almost unlimited time on a trip. Usually we're trying to catch a train, plane, dinner reservation, or check in at a hotel.
We wanted to check out a few locations while we were in the northwest. So we rented a car for two days to get out to the suburbs of Seattle and to drive to Portland which is only 90 minutes away.
We were kicked out of our Seattle hotel at 11 am and couldn't check into our Portland Air BNB until 4 pm. So we had time to kill.
My sweet sweet brother doesn't really know how to travel and relax. My sweet sweet sis-in-common-law loves to travel and loses her mind trying to travel with Nick.
So one night in spring 2021, we were having ramen together and talking about how it would be great to take a quick trip somewhere.
COVID vaccines were out, planes were back in the air, and we were all feeling like the walls were closing in on us.
So after brainstorming where to go, mostly weighing the sweatiness of summer Dan, we landed on the north west.
Remember when I said I found myself being really depressed and sort of brain dead last year? Well, I've had a draft of this blog for exactly a year sitting around. Started on 9/25/2021, finished, I guess tonight.
I always like to get my vacations written down soon after I get back so I don't forget some of the smaller details of where we went and what we saw. Luckily, I wrote a lot of bullet points, but let me fill you in on the vacation I took a year ago. From now on, it will be from the perspective of me, in 2021.
I went to Colorado Springs a few weeks ago.
I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't expect it to be so much of a desert. Just 90 minutes north is Denver, a city with gray mountains and cloud coverage. 90 minutes south, a desert, with strange natural wonders scattered throughout the dusty landscape.
I've learned over the years that an artist you like can completely break your heart by being a scumbag. Warning, the intro to this does mention pedophilia, but it gets light hearted after the break. Just down to the sentence that starts with "I'm not a huge Jimmy Buffett fan" if you want to skip the bad stuff.
My favorite band through most of college and well into my adulthood was Brand New. The music was interesting, it was perfectly balanced between yearning and loneliness, the isolation that comes from a world that seems to be spinning out of control, and anger that no one in power wants to change it.
And then it turned out that Jesse Lacey, the singer, had been soliciting pictures from underaged girls for years.
One of my recent favorites, the Arcade Fire, now has their own lead singer issues who is being accused of being a sex pest. (At the very least to of age women for now)
And it's not just a "now" issue. There's stories of David Bowie in weird situations with underaged women. Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, Don Henley, Elvis, the list keeps going. Ranker has a whole list of sex pest celebrities.
So this is where the blog changes direction. Like 90 degree, complete deflection into another topic.
Hi! It's me again. It's been a long time.
Honestly, I have about two dozen drafts written up about various topics, but almost all of them dig deep into the history of the anti-vax movement and where the dark money to continue to push it via media comes from, why banning abortions is a terrible idea, how we have failed at being stewards of the planet, etc.
Lot of things that got me fired up, depressed, and generally unfocused. And honestly, you probably don't want to hear most of these rants anyway. Maybe someday in person, we can talk about them, but via a blog, I don't know that it helps much. (Maybe I'll circle back, never know)
I also started writing up my Hawaii travel blog. I will return to that and finish it someday soon, but the post vacation insanity has kept me from having the focus to really do it justice.
So today, I instead naturally want to talk about bats.
