2020 in Review

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I already wrote a little about 2020 in a previous post, As Far West As We Could Go, but it’s been quite a sobering ride. Looking back through photos, it’s bizarre but really nice to see pictures that feel like forever ago when it’s felt like time has been frozen for so long. I’ve been learning to appreciate how lucky we were in 2020, and these photos really back that up.

Right before everything shut down, we had two friends come out to visit us a week apart. Sage and I got tattoos; we went exploring on an island with Martin; we all spent time with Loki before losing him about six weeks later. In the first part of the year, we also spent time at social events without masks, which just looks wrong now.

And then, suddenly, none of those things were happening anymore.

A deserted scene in Pike Place Market (photo/Jason Rafal)

We went to Astoria, Oregon and the nearby coast to spend some socially distant time with friends and family a couple times over the year.

We saw a lot of fun and crazy looking plants and animals on our hikes.

We had some wonderful times at lakes.

We also spend some beautiful times at the coast (and sound).

I am running out of categories, so here are some random photos from hikes in 2020.

Of course, I have to include some photos of our amazing view of Seattle, especially since we will be leaving this apartment soon. Please enjoy a sunrise, a few pictures of the moon (one with a bonus firework), and a picture of the awful air quality during the late summer fires.

Thanks for following along with this year’s adventures in the Pacific Northwest. It’s been a really rough year in a lot of ways, but we’re grateful to have spent it together in this beautiful place. Hopefully we’ll get to see some of you in person in 2021.

2019 in Review

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2019 was a crazy year for us. We sold our house, moved across the country, got new jobs, missed a vacation due to some awful travel luck, explored a new state, took a surprise trip to Paris a week before our planned Asia vacation, managed to make it back to Colorado for the grand opening of our friends’ distillery, spent Thanksgiving with Jason’s family on the East Coast, and ended the year with a family trip to Morocco and Lisbon. Eight states, eight countries, four continents. An absurd number of travel issues and wonderful new experiences.

We blogged our trips to Canada, Paris, Asia, and Morocco separately, but we also did a ton of exploring in Oregon and Washington, and we wanted to share some of what we experienced outside of our big international trips.

There are a lot of pictures in this blog, so I decided to really push the limit of our new CMS and just create more carousels than should ever be on one page. Please enjoy a snapshot of our first year in the Pacific Northwest.

I’ll start with some photos from our apartment. We love our apartment view, which looks out over Capitol Hill and First Hill. It’s beautiful at all times of day and all times of year. I’ve also included a few pictures from our apartment building’s 41st story rooftop, which has a lovely view of the Space Needle and sound.

The Center for Wooden Boats is a very cool society that gives free boat rides on Lake Union on Sunday mornings. If you’re willing to wait in line to sign up, it’s a great way to get out on the water. We got to hang out on a sailboat with a volunteer who told us about the radioactive tomatoes that grew in Gas Works Park when he was a kid.

In April, we decided to go to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, which is north of Seattle. In order to avoid the rather intense crowds and traffic, we got up absurdly early and got there for sunrise, where we hung out in the fields and took pictures with a handful of other photographers.

In early June, we started out a month of family visits by heading to Astoria to see Nicole’s family. We hung out with friendly cats, hiked through the woods, and took in the views from the Astoria Column.

A few days after we got back from Astoria, Jason’s parents came to visit us in Seattle. While they were here, we did a day trip out on the water to look for whales. We learned a lot about Orcas, transient and resident, and saw a lot of other birds and wildlife as well.

For Pride weekend, our friend Sage came to visit us. Along with partying way too hard, we also went to Whidbey Island and visited some of Sage’s favorite places from when his grandparents lived there.

Seattle has some wonderful parks. These pictures are from Gas Works Park and the Japanese Garden.

At one point during the summer, we spent a weekend on Whidbey Island. We stayed in a cabin in the woods, hiked along the shore, and hung out with some very old trees. It was a good weekend.

I know this may be hard to believe, but I am running out of categorizations. So, here we have A Brief Study in Seattle Architecture.

Emilie and Ally came to visit us in August, and we went to Olympic National Park for a couple of days. It was incredibly stunning - it was a gorgeous weekend, and we had a pretty crazy cloud inversion when we were on Hurricane Ridge. We also did a short but exceptionally difficult hike overlooking Lake Crescent. On our way home, we stopped at a beach to enjoy the sun. The Olympic Peninsula is a pretty incredible place.

We went on quite a few hikes over the summer. They ranged from incredibly rainy to sunny and clear, but they were all incredibly green and beautiful. Goat Lake was one of my favorites.

In October, we met a few friends out by Levenworth, WA for a weekend. Levenworth is a very odd place - it’s a Bavarian themed village, a concept thought up by the University of Washington as a response to the town’s concern about staying financially afloat. Oktoberfest in Levenworth is, of course, a huge thing, and the weekended ended up being a fun combination of outdoor adventuring and tipsy people watching.

We spent a lot of time walking around Seattle with friends, going to parades, drinking coffee, reviewing local art, and everything in between. This collection is an assortment of photos from those random outings.

In November, we went to Astoria to see Nicole’s sister and dad, and our friend Megan met us out there as well. We went to Youngs River Falls, which still had some beautiful fall colors.

In December, we visited Cannon Beach for the first time with Megan and her incredibly fluffy dog, Albus. The Oregon coast is amazingly beautiful, and we had a lovely sunny, misty day on the beach. We also hung out in Astoria again, where we visited the Maritime Museum (this attraction comes highly recommended, and we agree completely).

To finish the 2019 set, here are some of the adorable dogs around Seattle that we were able to see and spend time with. Seattle has some great dog parks and dog events, and we were able to be brief, vicarious dog owners with friends and strangers.