Seattle – Less Car, More Life

Tempus Puget – Putting Down Roots in Seattle

A lot has changed for us in the past 4 months: a new house, a new city, and even a new car. So how did we get here?

Why Seattle you ask? We love trees, I mean really love trees!

It’s been over 4 years since we set out from San Francisco on our grand adventure. Freshly vaccinated in April 2021, job notice given, a progressive purge of belongings, and into storage for the things we just couldn’t part with; we set off in August 2021 with our house still in escrow, two (old steel) touring bicycles and 6 bags for a planned two year experience. It was hard to imagine it could turn into 4 years, but it did. Turns out the world is pretty big, and other cultures very attractive (especially more familiar European ones). But time is fleeting, and as we settle into a new life, it all seems like a bit of a dream now.

February 2022 in a nearly empty Venice. Now that was a dream for sure.

Every day really was a new adventure. As we navigated ongoing Covid restrictions, testing, passes, and vaccinations, it was stressful, but we also felt the exhilaration of exploring magnificent new places with almost no tourist crowds to be found…Zermatt, Morocco, the English Lake District, and an almost empty Amalfi Coast, Venice, and Rome! Three trips through North and South Asia. And for most of our European adventure, the ultimate freedom of having just what we needed on our bicycles, with the ultimmate freedom to zig or zag at will. Time like this when everyone is in good health is precious, and we knew it.

Saying goodbye to our beloved San Francisco was tough.

The nomadic life was addictive and a great way to transition from a real full time job. And add in the amazing Trusted Housesitters experiences we had and the kindness of so many generous friends everywhere, and we truly felt like we had figured out a major hack of potential mid-life malaise and early retirement. We are especially grateful to those who hosted us in Europe and back in the States while we were without roots. It made it all possible. Not just having a place to stay, but having a familiar base to land, whether it be in the UK, France, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Palm Springs, Seattle…. One of our nomadic priorities was to keep our close ties to family and friends back in the USA, and therefore we swung back through nearly twice a year, which wasn’t always easy and often the most exhausting parts of our blissful existence.

One last hike in one of the most spectacular city adjacent parklands in the world, the Marin Headlands.

Our month of goodbyes in San Francisco also meant a lot of hellos on the wonderful new Sunset Dunes Park along the former Great Highway. A magnificent addition to open space in the City.

But just as we were in sync on the idea of nomadic life in 2021, we started to hit a limit in early 2025 and both began to feel a strong pull back to more permanency. We just couldn’t muster more packing and unpacking, tweaking temporary lodging to our likes, and never having a true home to come back to. There are a lot of things that you struggle with as a nomad. Daily travel adaptation takes a lot of your brain space (and expands it!) so it doesn’t always leave as much focus and energy for other aspects of living. We missed a community, our furniture and art, cooking, gardening, and having a few more clothes to choose from daily. So we came back to the West Coast in late June with the goal of finding a place to call home by the end of the year. Faster if possible.

Our summer back included my visit back to see family and friends in Chicago included catching the Mekons at the Square Roots Music Festival in Lincoln Sqaure. Thanks Michelle and Alan!

And a family visit to Western Colorado, of course.

My brother in law and I checking out the new sandstone cave suites being built at Honey Rock Landing on the Gunnison River; also a working orchard.

Well, the heat had come early this year, so the cherries were mostly past, but it was still a fun day out.

We were definitely not in Europe anymore, look at all this American space!

And fast it was. We have been following real estate in North Seattle for a few years now, and had hired an agent in January, who was fully aware that we would be far away for the first half of the year, but was happy to send us listings for a future potential sale. (I think he could sense we were serious and ready to settle down)

So when a new construction house-like condo that we had been tracking was still available in late June, we jumped at a chance to settle early. The timing was perfect as we had a house sit in San Francisco for our great friends and former neighbors (and their adorable cats) in July, but could then load up once and move our life North.

Saying goodbye to our storage unit was fun, with some final sorting and organizing and fun discoveries like this vintage 1970s Kelty Backpack. Still comfortable and useable! The bins on the front edges of our storage unit had served as our home shopping and gear swap-out point for trips home.

Nope, not taking a Uhaul to Seattle this time, just to the storage unit. We hired movers -:)

Great to see some good friends in SF for a “final” dinner.

Our Step-Nephew was kind enough to stop for a sweaty Photo Op at Mile 20 of the SF Marathon as we cheered in the Haight-Asbury (His first, well done Ben!)

Excited or freaked out?! Leaving San Francisco for our two-day drive to Seattle.

So we’ve owned our new home in Seattle for three months now and I can already feel a change in how my brain is looking at its surroundings, how I see every person and place now as an opportunity for a new long term friend. Our travel brains are now recording the surroundings in permanent mapping mode reserved for “home”. And long term relationships with shops, businesses, and culture again. When you are a nomad, you make some great friends along the way (and keep many!), but you are often just skimming the surface of the world and your surroundings.

Seattle is big, progressive, and evolving, and we’ll be talking more about how that influenced our decision to move here.

Looking at our new house…one thing we craved after living out of bags for 4 years was a bit of space.

So how has life in North Seattle been so far?

First off, people are mellower here than the Bay Area. Not every one of course, but in general. This suits us as we are now mellower after four years of travel and detached from our 30+ years in the wonderfully stimulating and dynamic San Francisco Bay Area. The west coast has always been a draw for a certain type of person, and the Pacific Northwest seems to draw folks who are perhaps a bit more introspective, down to earth, and happy to enjoy a bit of rain and darkness during the winter balanced with the joy of trees, water, and four distinct seasons.

We have a jump start on friends in the area, with some of our closest friends walking distance from us.

And we’ve not really experienced the famous “Seattle Freeze”, as we’ve found our neighborhood to be very friendly and we’re slowly starting the process of building a new community here. Maybe we brought the right attitude from our travels, and it seems the love of bikes and a green Subaru has made us almost indistinguishable from the long time locals. Well, at least a bit.

So why Seattle now?

Climate and the outdoors – Yup, we like rain, forests, evergreens; and clouds. It may be a little rough in the heart of the longer and darker winter, so we’ll let you know how we fare. A bit of winter travel is definitely in the cards, especially after the warmth of the holidays passes into January.
The Right Direction – Seattle has been building a ton of housing. They liberalized re-development on almost all lots in 2019 and we actually moved into one of the results: new housing in an old established neighborhood. Almost unheard of in SF. (We were waiting and trying…)
Economic Diversity – Seattle has a broader range of economic strata, and has built so many apartments and condos that market prices are almost the same (or less!) than dedicated affordable housing. This is a success. Single family housing prices have soared here recently and this is still a huge challenge for the continued prosperity in the region.
Transportation – ok, Seattle is more car based than San Francisco, and probably will always be based on its development geography, but Seattle has passed 3 bond measures to build out transit and an extensive light rail system. Sound Transit is now running two lines, with multiple expansions and openings coming. Rapid buses and great upgrades to the cycling infrastructure (mostly due to another city bond measure renewed by voters last November).
It’s a big city! Ok, it’s not New York, London, or Paris, but it’s also not Austin or Portland, which just don’t quite check our real city boxes (sorry), with a deep history, global connections, and a broad base of businesses and companies to pump life into the local economy. It certainly feels more like a working city than the core of the SF Bay recently.

Seattle has a history of bike friendliness, including extensive and well-used rail-trails like the Burke-Gilman

The economic diversity matters a lot as San Francisco was in a bit of a service doom loop, as most blue collar and service workers couldn’t come near to affording to live within 50 miles of the city. Here people have many more options. Of course, they have to compete with white collar newcomers from California and elsewhere, who have been migrating to the PNW for years.

We still love buses and trains, and Seattle has a good network, despite the size of the City.

A reason we didn’t consider in the move here was taxes – It’s true, Washington State has no state income tax, but that was not really a factor for us. Life is too short to live somewhere just to save 5-10% on taxes. Besides, other taxes and user fees are pretty high, so it’s not exactly a tax haven. We do notice that a lot of infrastructure and services are more streamlined or less robust than California and San Francisco but maybe that’s ok. We’ll see. I do have long term concerns about the sustainability of the infrastructure in the state, and they are constantly chasing repairs on nearly failing bridges. But local leaders have figured ways to fund things here, such as the 15 year special sewer fee we’ll be paying for our new house connection.

Yup, a New Subaru and bit more car in our lives. But our final car rental retun for awhile.

Seattle is a big diverse city with lots of similar ties to Asia and Asian cultures found along the West Coast. Vietnamese food is everywhere here and delicions.

Full combo Pho with all the good tendon and tripe I love. Expect to see more on food in future posts.

So we plan to continue to blog about our continued travels and our post-nomadic life transition. (Yes, I am already planning our spring bike tour in Europe…) We plan to host lots of friends and family for a change, and be closer to most of them too. But we don’t have a specific plan for how long we will stay here, 5-10 years, maybe longer as we settle in and continue to love it. We’ll see. We have been nomadic travelers twice in our lives now, so we know how to do it.

We also plan to keep housesitting in our lives, even as we settle in our unexpected new house, we just wrapped up a memorable house sit for a lovely family near Gig Harbor, with Puget Sound waterfront views and access. It was really magical, but was a bit tough to be away from our new place after moving in for nearly two months. But we committed to the sit before we knew we would buy a place, and were determined to keep our word to do the sit regardless. We take the “trusted” part of housesting seriously and it was great to experience life on the Sound.

It’s really hilly in Seattle and our neighborhood is on the plateau of the old glacial ridge (as is much of the city), so Cheryl decided it was time for a new tool in our transportation mix, an ebike.

There is so much to explore here in the Pacific Northwest that we already have dozens of adventures on our minds; mountains, rivers, camping, wildlife, and the endless salt waters of the magical Puget Sound. And just as we explored every nook of San Francisco over 30 years, We are already enjoying getting to know Seattle and its many urban gems. And we plan to keep our precious SF Bay Area friends close, with visits to and from our former home.

Enjoying frequent swims at our house sit near Gig Harbor. Refreshingly clear, but cold!

So I need to wrap up, as Cheryl has so many more things to add and blog about, and we have finally slowed down a bit from our big transtion to reflect again in more future musings.

Happy Halloween and Happy Fall to All!

UK to USA.

Definitely one of our favorite views in the UK. The harbor at Tenby, Wales.

When we were both working our vacations were at most three weeks long, and were in search of new places and new experiences. Now that we’re in our fourth year of constant travel we still love new places and experiences but also love to revisit familiar places.

Arriving from Norwich to London, Liverpool Street Station.

And back with our good friends Erik and Hannah in Tenby Wales. One of our happy familiar places.

Headed to lunch in Laugharne which is famous for being Dylan Thomas’s home for the last four years of his life.

The garage of the boat house, where Thomas wrote a lot of his most famous works.

It’s set up as if he walked away for a cup of tea. He died while on tour in New York City, so in a way, he did just walk away.

I requested that the guys look “moody and poetic”. Rich is used to my requests, Erik laughed!

I first visited Laugharne in 1984 or so, it’s nice to see that Dylan Thomas’s popularity is still strong.

Laugharne Castle. Such an imposing site. Such a tough place to find on the map when you’re looking for “Larn”.

Rich packed up and ready to leave Tenby.

After a delightful stay in Tenby we headed off to Bristol, another of our favorite UK cities. This was our third stay in Bristol. It’s always fun to chat to a local and see their sometimes puzzled delight over our love of Bristol. It’s an easy train ride from Tenby, and easy to get back to London from Bristol, thanks to the Great Western Railway which linked London and Bristol in 1841. Engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Yes, we are fans of his work and highly recommend the SS Great Britain museum ship, which he also designed.

Bristol Temple Mead station. Plenty of bikes in Bristol.

A swan and a view over the Floating Harbor, a lock controlled off shoot of the tidal River Avon created in 1809.

The hydraulic equipment at Underfall Yard Visitor Centre, which explores and explains the elegant engineering behind the Floating Harbor, and its importance in the development of Bristol.

Artsy shot out of the historic building.

It wouldn’t be a trip to Bristol without a visit to a Banksy artwork.

The Bag O’Nails pub. My favorite pub. Another must visit place for us.

Pub patrons trying to seem uninterested in the cats.

The cats truly uninterested in the pub patrons.

Just minding my own business by the record player.

Gotcha! Lured in by my wool sweater and scarf and spot near the heater. I failed to look nonchalant when this cat graced me with their presence.

The Left Handed Giant pub, another favorite of ours.

Sometimes it was also a bit cold inside the pubs.

The ceiling of The Cornubia pub. Horse brasses and beer mats. Yes, a lot of pub visits.

It was not cold inside the Cornubia. My favorite pub fire so far. Clean burning coal. Wood fires not allowed in that area, the bartender said, but clean burning coal is ok.

We took the train to Bath to go for a walk in the hills.

Snow hanging on thanks to the cold weather.

We take as many opportunities as we can to meet up with friends, so we shoved off from Bristol towards Hastings, where friends from London had recently moved.

Charing Cross Station, London. On our way to Hastings. Nice digital departure board.

British seaside towns. Love them. They share similarities but are all so different.

The covered promenade with the Hastings pier in the background.

What does this British seaside town have that no other one does? Our friends Joe and Justina!

We had a great walking tour of Hastings. A lovely town well worth visiting.

Where fisherfolk store their equipment and hang their nets to dry. From above the tall narrow black buildings look like toys or monopoly houses.

And no day is complete without a pub stop, this time at The Clown.

And after an easy train ride, back in London for a few days.

The modern skyline in the glorious winter sunshine.

I love the juxtaposition of the Tower of London and the Shard.

It was a super cold and still morning, the reflection of the bridge in the river caught our attention.

Frost on the river walk, and slightly hazy air made the view soft focus and golden.

We were staying right near Spitalfields and the view of City of London with the old buildings in the foreground was captivating.

Modern buildings looming over old buildings.

Museum of the Home, located in a row of old almshouses. Loved the Rooms Through Time exhibit, the evolution of London dwellings from 1630 to present.

Dinner date with young friends who recently moved to London.

When we were in Lyon on our way to Paris we caught an arts update on TV which mentioned the Tim Burton exhibit in London. We quickly booked tickets for our last day in the UK. So glad we did. Our two London museum visits, Museum of the Home and the Tim Burton exhibit couldn’t have been more different. Where one dealt with the practicalities of home, changing styles of furniture and social interaction, the other was the products of one man’s talent and creativity.

Recreated office, the desk blotter doodles were fantastic.

I wasn’t aware what a talented artist he is.

Many of the movie sets and costumes had signs not to photograph them. This Nightmare before Christmas-esque mobil and wallpaper had no such sign.

I’ve been having a hard time with this blog post. We flew from London to Chicago, saw our good friends Michelle and Alan – I have no pictures! – and Rich’s birth mom. From Chicago it was off to Grand Junction Colorado to see my Mom and Sister and Niece, very few pictures. Then Seattle, then San Francisco.

Lori looking out the window on January 20th, 2025.

A lot of Americans will understand the trepidation we were feeling, trepidation that has proved correct. It feels frivolous to do anything but focus on the state of the nation. Watch the news? Keep the news at bay? Focus on family and friends? Yes, that.

Seattle with our favorite Pacific Northwesters. Northwesterns? Cecily and Christine.

41 months. That’s how long we’ve been traveling since selling our place in San Francisco. So many amazing places and wonderful people. Many hotel rooms, wonderful house and pet sits, pensions, apartments. We both realized this winter that we are ready to have a place to call our own. Spring our stuff from storage and move it into our own space. We still intend to travel a lot, but we’ll be able to go home. Cook in our own kitchen. Sleep in our own bed. Host guests! Have parties!

Sutro Tower in San Francisco and the Happy Travelers.

But first we head off to Taipei and then Indonesia. The house hunting can wait until we return to the US in the summer. Stay tuned!

It’s Different Up North

We continued our Northwest summer ramble out of Seattle and headed up I-5 about an hour and a half to Bellingham, WA.

Emerald or « Toad Lake » near Belingham, Washington.

Closer to Vancouver than Seattle, Bellingham frequently appears on “Best places to retire is the USA” lists or click bait, and for good reason. It’s a small city (90k) on Puget Sound in a beautiful natural setting, kept vibrant by the constant youthful churn of 14,000 students at Western Washington University. This was our third visit to Bellingham, but the first time we had spent a week.

My summer bike at Clayton Beach, part of Larrabee State Park and the Chuckanut Mountains

Our house sit was across from a small lake at the edge of town, but amazingly secluded up in a steep vale in the local foothills of the Cascades. Our responsibilities included a very sweet outdoor dog and seven chickens. The dog was reportedly standoffish but we soon bonded with him and enjoyed some fun walks around the lake and woods.

Our dog letting me know he was ready for a walk!

Our house sit included all the fresh eggs we could eat!

House sitting is great for really trying out new locales to see if it a place we may want to spend more time or even settle for a time. We really liked Bellingham in the summer and had considered settling here at one point, but think now that we still need a bit more city in our next home.

Downtown Bellingham is in the process of reimagining its industrial waterfront with popular interim uses as a wild bmx track, shipping container bars and restaurants, and summer festivals.

The Pacific Northwest and Seattle in particular are so different than the Bay Area we called home for most of the past 30 years. We are used to the pace and competition of dense SF living and you really notice the difference in the Seattle area. We are the angsty rushed city folk here. The massive amount of wealth and economic prosperity generated in San Francisco and Silicon Valley has put pressure on every aspect of living; cost, housing, services, transportation. We lived a great life in San Francisco by keeping our work and home close and cycling, walking, or transiting most places.

Riding the #40 bus in Seattle. It’s fairly extensive, clean and reliable, but can we live comfortably without a car here?

And our double income, no kids (DINKS) life kept us comfortable financially. But we could feel the strain the past 20 years on services and the vast gulf that was growing between “knowledge workers” and those in service or more traditional blue collar roles. San Francisco and California has tried to fight this trend with social programs (minimum wage, city health plans, affordable housing, etc) but it can’t keep up with the demand for housing. It’s a global problem in wealthier areas of the planet, but especially evident in California.

Cycling the boardwalk to the Fairhaven neighborhood of Bellingham, arguably its most charming area.

The Bellingham area is unrivaled for mountain biking, including expert crazy bike only downhill runs

So back to Seattle. Seattle has a lot of the same challenges as the Bay Area, including tech wealth and escalating housing costs. But as we noted in our winter visit Seattle blogs, they ARE building more and have looser zoning laws near transit by right. (meaning NIMBYs can’t stop it) DADUs (Detached Accessory Housing Unit!), townhomes and condos are sprouting all over the city in almost every neighborhood.

Great to meet and chat with fellow nomads at a meetup in Edmunds, WA

All this fairly random looking new housing looks strange to us as we’ve hardly see any housing construction in San Francisco, except the thousands of units concentrated South of Market, Mid and Upper Market Street Areas, and a few other pockets and buildings. But they are often not in the areas where most people want to live.

Great Pho at Miss Pho in Crown Hill. The diversity and quality of the food in Seattle is first rate, but unlike SF, you may need to search for it in strip malls.

Seattle is building more where people want to live, as well as very dense high rise residential in First Hill, and the South Lake Union edge of downtown. Add to this an ever expanding light rail metro system (thanks to a $54B 2018 bond measure) and you have a fairly dynamic feel to the City. It’s almost twice the size of SF, and feels more spread out, especially from north to south. It generally doesn’t have the magical density and intimate feeling walking from neighborhood to neighborhood as San Francisco and many more trips are by car. This is a big difference for us to adjust to if we settle in Seattle.

Golden Gardens Beach Park; beautiful and swimable, if you don’t mind chilly water!

The Puget Sound beaches are more for exploration than swimming

SF is dense but could and should be denser, with more new buildings all over the western half of the city, where the weather and transit are great. But NIMBYs, Prop 13, and zoning keep the city at a relative standstill. It’s created a bit of a housing doom loop, since new housing construction is so expensive, that it’s not even affordable for developers selling condos for 1-2 million each. We’ve blogged on this on our past visits, but the issue just gets bigger and bigger and plays a big role in our decision on where we might settle down next in the World (if we do -;).

« Bruun Idon » at Lincoln Park, one of Thomas Dambu’s six troll sculptures in the region and made entirely of recycled/reused materials.

But to be honest, the biggest difference we noticed in Seattle this stay was the pace of life and what I like to call the “expectation of goodness.” People here are more patient and expect that you are, and are acting honestly and in the public good. A friend of mine in SF noted to me that Seattle today is what SF was like in the 80s and 90s. A bit slower, more provincial, and where everyone was not quite so full of themselves. It’s a cutthroat world in the Bay Area…not quite New York City levels yet, but noticeably more manic than the Pacific Northwest cities. Seattle’s slightly slower pace is attractive to us in our early retirement.

The Iconic Aurora Bridge built in 1932 connects Fremont to Queen Anne

So after a pleasant week exploring the trails and cycling paths of the beautiful Bellingham area, we headed back to Seattle for our final house sit of the trip in the Ballard/Sunset Hill neighborhood. We loved the area as it’s very quiet traffic wise and has a nice grid of roads cut off on the western side edge by a bluff and Puget Sound. There are some views toward the Olympic Mountain Range that allows you to get out of the trees.

Cheryl tending our house sit Pea Patch, a community garden system throughout Seattle’s neighborhoods.

Garden fresh tomatoes and beans from the Pea Patch

Sampling some beers at Lucky Envelope, one of over a dozen craft breweries in Ballard alone!

Another magnificent troll outside the National Nordic Museum in Ballard

Cheryl contemplates how to get some of the endless driftwood to our future garden.

Our house sit kitten testing breakfast table boundaries.

The grid layout of most of Seattle makes walking and biking very tenable, but the hills are a challenge, even coming from San Francisco!? Why? Because the large masses of each neighborhood often rise up and fall over long distances, meaning a trip back up to your house can mean climbing up gradual hills for 10, 20, or even 50 blocks! And much of the east-west geography is steep, so cross town journeys can be steep in places.

The Neighborhood Greenways are a nice way to get around by bike in Seattle. The hills and rough pavement mean that wider tires and electric assist would be a great addition for getting around realistically by bike

Enjoying Ballard’s Scandinavian roots with good friends Cecily and Christine at Skål Beer Hall.

Oh but the trees, mountains, and water interplay are so nice! And there is a good bike network with some famous long distance rail trails, such as the 20 mile Burke Gilman, which links up much of the interior shoreline of North Seattle. I was able to do a 35 mile north Lake Washington loop from North Seattle almost entirely on separated paths…very nice.

Saying goodbye to Seattle summer for now with one final swim in Lake Washington….so nice and different from the always cold S.F. Bay.

So we loaded up the rental car and headed early out of Seattle for the 2 day drive back to San Francisco, again with an overnight in Ashland. The drive is possible in one long 13+ hour day, but we never like to drive more than half of that in a day. Heck, we don’t like to drive to the grocery store, but sometimes a car is the most convenient way and it is a chance to listen to some good podcasts and music!

Enjoying a road bike ride back in the Bay Area

And saying hello to some UK friends Frank and Liv in Alamo Square on a lovely fog-free evening.

Our four days back in the Bay Area were busy with sorting gear at the storage unit, haircuts, finances, Covid/flu shots, etc. but also some nice time with friends. But we now just arrived back to our euro-base in France after a successful and fairly pleasant one-way journey on Condor Airways. (SFO-FRA-GVA)

Now we’ll relax a bit, get over our jet lag, sort our gear, and get ready to head out on the bikes for another fall bike tour adventure in a few days. More on that soon. A Bientôt!

Summer time is social time.

Riding across the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (the 520) in Seattle.

Our month long stay in SF was filled with visiting friends, enjoying our house sit kitty buddies, a trip to Chicago for Rich, a visit from my sister Kathy, and a trip to Colorado for me, and loads of cycling and hiking with friends for Rich.

A walk in SF with local and visiting friends.

Rich on an urban hike with his friends Mike and Fred. Just three retired guys wearing hats and having fun.

Dinner with good friends. How amazing to be able to host a dinner party.

Rich, my sister Kathy, and me after a bakery stop. Enjoying the pastries and the views from Alta Plaza Park in SF.

Dinner with the upstairs neighbors, Gisela and Randall.

Rich having a moment with our mailing address.

Oh yes, a word about our mailing address and our residency. We are California residents. It’s where we pay taxes and vote. We are lucky to call home a place where our city and state want us to vote. We’ve heard of other full time travelers from other states who are getting removed from the voting rolls due to using a mailbox service, and having to re-register and make their case for voting. Thank you San Francisco for making voting accessible.

Sunset light for a family photo. My mom with all four of her children in Colorado.

July on the Grand Mesa means wildflowers.

A dramatic sunset in Grand Junction making a lovely backdrop for Lorilie the ranch Dalmatian.

And a dramatic sunrise to bookend the night. Yes, there was smoke in the air from western fires.

With Mom and Chuck at the Fruita Farmers Market.

Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, Rich is single handedly wrangling two cats! A chill contemplative cat moment.

Dinner at our friends’ house in Oakland. We miss these kind of get togethers when we’re on the road.

Keeping in touch with our friends in the US is so important to us. During past visits we’ve run ourselves ragged trying to see as many of our friends and family as possible. It leads to exhaustion. Our solution this trip was to stay longer, thanks to our good friends Nancy and Mike who let us stay at their house and take care of their kitties for the entire month of July.

With friends, Robin, Jeff, and Rob, sitting in a beer garden in SF. July in SF means down jackets.

Crocheted birdies on a street tree on Page Street in SF.

As if having two cats to look after and cuddle wasn’t enough, Gisela and Randall got kittens!

Which of course meant kitten cocktail parties.

Following one of Nancy’s walks in GG Park for a book she is working on.

A month of San Francisco socializing done we got into a rental car and headed towards Seattle. We stayed two nights in Ashland, Oregon, just long enough to marvel at the huge trees and go for a walk in Lithia Park. We spent the hottest part of the day hiding from the heat in our hotel room.

And another huge tree in someone’s front garden.

Will we get a handle on fires by letting nature handle it? And letting fires burn?

Our walk in Lithia Park was thankfully mostly shaded.

From Ashland Oregon we went all the way to Seattle in one day so we would have time to spend with our dear friends Christine and Cecily before they left for a trip.

A walk in Saint Edward State Park. Rich rode there and met us.

Picnic with new friends Chris and Katherine who we met in Borneo.

Warm summer evenings. Something we rarely had in San Francisco. Dinner outside – without jackets!

Rich was thrilled to go for a ride with Annie, who showed him a great Lake Washington loop.

Erika shared some of their garden bounty with me.

Even though the weather turned to grey the shorts stayed. On the ferry to Whidbey Island to meet up with more friends.

Linda and Steve, fellow nomads. You can follow their nomad journey here.

We were fortunate enough to book two house sits during our time in the Pacific Northwest through Trusted House Sitters, and our first sit in Bellingham was about to start. If you are interested in house sitting we do recommend THS.

The Happy Travelers, enjoying a PNW summer.

Still to come, the sit in Bellingham, back to Seattle for another ten days, then down to SF to get ready to fly to France to be reunited with our touring bikes again.

Sitting Pretty in Seattle – 2022 in Review

Happy New Year! We’re just winding down our second house sit in Seattle and after almost 2 weeks, we’ve learned a lot about life during winter in Puget Sound. As expected, it is wetter, colder, and darker than the SF Bay Area winter. No real surprise there.

The amazing Cheryl and Seward Park along Lake Washington

Fully equipped kitchens, one of house sittings many perks

But “living” in two different untouristed residential neighborhoods has allowed us the opportunity to experience a bit more realistic perspective. We’ve walked to the parks, grocery stores, and restaurants that we might use if we lived here. We have to decide to walk, take a bus, or drive as yes, life in most of Seattle would be fairly limited without a car for some trips ( We’d also have bikes of course).

Kubota Garden – a Japanese garden oasis and one of Seattle’s 485 parks!

People are very laid back compared to SF and friendly if you engage them, but sidewalk or trail greetings are not a given. Just all a bit reserved here. Nordic roots maybe play a part in this. Or maybe it’s the fact that the area draws more introverts with the weather and open space of the Northwest. Where can I hide in the wet woods? Seattle for sure.

Coal Creek Falls in Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park

Cougar Mountain Reserve was previously an active coal mine…ferns hide the legacy pits!

Seattle has been cool and intriguing to the nation for years, but especially since the rise of grunge and SubPop records in the late 80’s and early 90’s. We’ve been here many times, including multiple bike tours and I’ve been listening to the amazing KEXP for years on the web.

The glassy north side view of Seattle’s skyline with our friend Christine.

We always enjoy it, but how would it be in the dead of winter? Well, we still love it. The magnificent firs, cedars, and other evergreens are in frequent view and are so soothing along with the occasional spectacular Mountain View’s. But it IS cold and damp, and we’ve only had two doses of sunshine in two weeks. Other than an unusual ice storm our first few days, the rain has always been on and off.

The mighty Olympic Mountains from Queen Anne near downtown Seattle. The core and inner neighborhoods are very walkable.

But like the locals, it’s really not an issue if you have decent gear or just ignore it and run or walk in the rain. It’s just water Californians, don’t freak out like a cat in a bathtub! We haven’t freaked out.

More cute cats to keep us warm in Seattle

What’s that thing on the ground behind Cheryl? Rare winter sun in Seattle.

So we’ve surmised that cozy and warm housing is a key to happiness here as there is no fallback to walk in regenerative sunshine in winter, like SF. Oh, and Vitamin D supplements left over from our last dark winter in the UK are just what the doctor ordered. And we’d also need to scale back our pace a bit…which is good.

A rite of passage in the PNW…drive thru Espresso near Mount Vernon.

Another place we’ve been intrigued about, mostly from afar, is the City of Bellingham which is two counties and about 90 miles north of Seattle. Close, but a very separate place. We bike toured through the area during late summer many years ago and found it beautiful and it felt a bit undiscovered. It’s no longer undiscovered by any means after articles in the New York Times and appearances on endless “best places to retire” lists.

Lake Whatcom…drinking water and recreation source for Bellingham.

We only had two brief days to explore the city and environs but it is a very nice place. Funky but somewhat vibrant downtown, hills, views, forest, lakes, mountains and many parks. It’s also only about an hour by car to Vancouver, Canada, although the border crossing can slow things down.

Downtown Bellingham is funky and hip boosted by 16,000 students at Western Washington University

Could we live here? Sure, it’s very cool. But at this point in our lives, we still crave a bit more urban density, diversity, and a variety of neighborhoods to explore. Seattle has this AND access to the outdoors, although maybe not as close or as as quickly to remote wilderness as Bellingham.

Afternoon Chai and a Cortado at Makeworth Coffee Roasters – Bellingham Chic.

So the decision to live somewhere else for awhile is not easy for us and is not easy when you’ve been in the blissful bubble of San Francisco, which is so eminently walkable, very bikeable, and still full of creative people, variable cultures, and amazing food. We always compare places to these high bars.

Whatcom Falls Park in Bellingham. Including a landmark WPA bridge.

A legacy logging railroad trestle in Bellingham who’s days are unfortunately numbered due to collapse and flood risk.

But SF has its problems, especially affordability, exacerbated by a lack of new housing and stagnant neighborhood planning. The financial disparities are tough and strain everything. Seattle has similar issues, but has more of a relief valve in buildable area and housing options. But we also have deep roots and hundreds of friends and family in the Bay Area. We would miss them but are convinced we could find some good friends here too…we just might need to start the conversation!

Breadfarm in the quirky artist hamlet of Bow…very picturesque but we didn’t think the bread lived up to the scene.

Enjoy your pastry and coffee by an inlet of Puget Sound

Unfortunately, the King tides and the lowlands around Samish Bay don’t always mix well.

But no need to fret about where we land yet as we have decided to wander the globe for another year. We stayed in 130 different places in 2022….yup, that is a lot, so settling down somewhere now would be a bit like hitting a travel brick wall at 100mph. Other stats for 2022 FYI: 45 days of house sitting (9 cats, 2 horses, 2 bunnies), 61 days in apartments, 146 days in hotels (apart hotels, B&Bs, Inns, and pensions), 3 nights on transport(planes, trains, and a ferry), and finally 110 days with friends and family (thank you all-:). Whew!

So tomorrow we meander a few days back to the Bay Area for final prep and friend catch up before heading on our next big adventure in Asia…first stop, Taiwan. So excited!

Happy New Year and Happy Travels. Maybe we’ll see you out there!

Road trip! PNW, here we come!

Let’s get this part out of the way up front. This road trip does involve a car. I would love to say we figured out a way to do this trip car free, but we didn’t. Do we love road-trips? Well yes, they are a great way to explore the western USA. And who doesn’t love the idea of (safely) cruising up the coast singing along to the radio?

Bye bye California. Oregon and Washington here we come.

In a movie of this road trip you’d now have a montage of us visiting our storage unit to pick up cold weather and water proof gear and excitedly stuffing the rental car with this and that (A cooler! An air filter! Bike helmets! Rain gear!) Upbeat fun music would play. And what would be the music playing when we have to take all of that stuff out of the car each night and into a hotel? Some mournful march. So many bags.

Going from one backpack each to this excess of luggage is quite a shock. We’re also toting around groceries from our stay in SF, since we’re house sitting in Seattle and we love the opportunity to cook. And has anyone ever stayed organized during a road trip? Not us.

After a lovely night with friends near Redding our first stop is for spring water.

Every available bottle filled with spring water.

The travel planner was thinking about the coming storm and the pass we needed to get over. This smile says, get moving please.

The happy travelers in front of the spring which is the headwaters of the Sacramento River.

There is something about heading north from San Francisco which always excites us. North. Towards wilderness. Towards mountains and coastline. Remote stretches of road and big views. Not south towards bigger population centers, but north.

North, where The State of Jefferson is proposed. Wikipedia will explain it in full.

What heart doesn’t thrill to the blacktop stretching out for miles under a big sky?

A stop in Ashland Oregon for coffee and chai.

Still racing that storm which eventually wrecked havoc on much of the US, and coated Seattle in ice, we spent a night in Eugene and got an early start to make it to Seattle and our first house sit, the temperature dropping sharply each hour, and the ice day looming.

Turkey chili on a cold night, cozy at our house sit.

Seattle’s Mayor asked everyone to stay home during the ice event. Barnacle was happy to oblige.

Snow. Freezing temperatures. Sleet. Streets and sidewalks were solid sheets of ice. Thankfully we went grocery shopping right after we got to our two cat house sit, so we were well equipped to stay inside with the kitties and wait for the thaw. We did put on our boots at one point and opened the front door. The ice on the front steps convinced us to just go back inside. We were regretting not grabbing our traction devices for our boots during our storage unit rampage of stuff accumulation.

Barnacle and Lucy snuggled in for the day.

But even the cats were getting cabin fever.

Kitty on a leash! She was thrilled to be a bit closer to the birds she had stalked through the window. (That is continuing construction of Seattle light rail behind me.)

Once the snow and ice had melted we took one of the cats outside on her leash and harness. Seattle weather wasn’t done with us yet though. During our last morning at the house sit high winds caused a power outage. Now I regretted not having the small solar lantern I always take camping. Rich regretted not grabbing the headlamp he had held up in the storage unit. Thankfully, we had noticed where our host kept candles and matches, so, congratulating ourselves on our adaptability we began to pack up by candlelight.

Overcast morning, candle and iPhone light.

So what was the draw to Seattle in December, you might wonder? Good friends were going to be visiting family in Seattle and generously included us in their Christmas celebrations. We found two different Trustedhousesitters in two different Seattle neighborhoods, and jumped at the opportunity to explore a city we are familiar with, but want to know better.

Christmas morning is even better with musical friends.

As we travel we wonder a lot about when and where me might settle eventually. Back in SF? Somewhere around Seattle? It might be difficult to understand how unstressed we are by our lack of future living plans, but we’re really enjoying our travel life. When we aren’t trying desperately to find something in a pile of luggage. Solution? Less stuff!