What a difference a year makes

It's hard to believe, but this time last year Amanda had already quit her job and moved back to Ephrata while I was finishing my last week at MossRehab and sleeping on the couch at my friend Meg's place. We had no idea what to expect, but all we were focused on was our grand vision of gallivanting across the U.S. together. Now here we are, all the way across the continent, living out our dream.

Sometimes we will just look through pictures and remember some of the great places we have been; Nashville, St. Louis, Yellowstone, San Francisco, and Yosemite, just to name a few. We will often comment how it seems like so long ago we did some of these things, but in reality it hasn't even been a year! Of course, it hasn't always gone according to plan, but that's been half the fun. It has also been a tremendous privilege to be able to use this forum to share our experiences with everyone and have you come along for the ride.

After returning back to Aberdeen from our very busy time at home in PA, we have continued exploring western Washington. A couple weekends ago we travelled to Woodinville, WA for the highly recommended Red Hook Brewery tour. It did not disappoint. For just $1, you are treated to a multitude of samples, history lessons, random information, and more samples. Fun fact about Red Hook: One of the owners is one of the founders of Starbucks. So not only is this guy making millions on Starbucks, but he is adding to his fortune with each delicious Red Hook sale. Some people have all the luck.

This is why we love Red Hook

We needed a few Red Hooks the following week though as we had some looooooong days at work. Our director of rehab recently resigned, so we are stuck in limbo until a new director is located. As a result, things are not running as smoothly as they should (not that things were all that efficient in the first place) and the paperwork began piling up. We eventually got caught up, but more than a few late nights in the office over the past two weeks have been necessary to do so. Fortunately though, our interim directors have been utilizing our feedback and are working to fix any issues and improve the way in which we do our documentation. It also helps that the other therapists we work with are fantastic people and make going to work a very enjoyable experience, even if you do happen to get out at 10:00 some nights and still have paperwork waiting for you the next morning!

Enough about work. Let's get to the real fun stuff, last weekends phenomenal adventure. I discovered this past weekend that God put me on this earth for one purpose. Snowshoeing. It might be too early to state this after only one time doing it, but I'm pretty sure I'm the best snowshoer ever. Ask Amanda, she'll back it up.

On Saturday we travelled back to Mt. Rainier with our co-workers Jen and Jared to play in the abundance of snow and to try out snowshoeing. After making our way through roads cut out of up to 12 feet of snow, we came to the area known as Paradise.

Snowplowing. Lots of snowplowing.

Here there was a snow park area for tubing and sledding. Since Jen and Jared are originally from Florida, they had never sledded. While I think it took longer to blow up the tubes than we actually spent using them, we made a few passes down the hills before we all took off on our ranger guided snowshoe walk.

Sledding at the base of a 14,411' mountain...check!

Jared and Jen's first ever attempt at sledding/tubing

Once on snowshoes, you can pretty much go where you want in the park. There's 12 feet of snow between you and the ground, so it's not as though you can really hurt any of the terrain. Both Amanda and I felt right at home on snowshoes. I was pretty much unstoppable. It felt so good that I was ready to climb to the summit in them. Amanda was no slouch either, as she kept trucking right along through the deep snow. After learning about all the behaviors of the animals brave enough to stay on the mountain during the winter months, the four of us headed out on our own. With our fancy new hand held GPS telling us where to go, we set out trekking across the mountain. We hiked past people digging snow caves, we went up to glacially carved overlooks, and up to a high enough elevation where both Mt. St. Helens and Mt Adams could be clearly seen in the distance. Snowshoeing is without a doubt our new favorite activity. It opens up a whole new wintry world that would otherwise be impassable (or at least really really difficult to traverse).

Who looks good on snowshoes? WE DO!

12' of snow is no problem at all



Views like this are why you get snowshoes

Snowshoeing at Mt. Rainier is just one example of the kinds of new experiences we have been exposed to since we completely altered our lifestyle about a year ago. While it has been, and will continue to be, incredibly tough to be away from family and friends, we feel that we are taking advantage of this whole experience as best we can. Thank you all for supporting us over this past year and we continue to look forward to sharing with you what is to come.

One final item to share. I think we are going to be ordering air bed number 4. It seems the replacement airbed from Coleman has sprung a leak. Looks like it's back to sleeping on the floor until we get this all figured out. Yet another one of the fun "experiences" of life as a traveller!