winter weekend camping on whidbey island.

petah and i wanted to do somesing fun and get away for a quick trip on valentine's day.  we bounced back and forth between a few ideas for short road trips, but ended up taking the ferry over to whidbey island. i had actually never even been to whidbey..wat!? how i enjoyed it so!

all of the following photos were taken on my iphone 6.

i'm not sure how i feel about this new a color story app. i think it is cool, and made this photo of the bus above look cool, but i kinda feel like its cheating in a way.  with all the great photo editing apps these days, i feel like people's photos are already so altered. the photo above is super misleading, as it looks like we are cruising down some sun-drenched highway in the warmth of summertime. it sorta makes me feel like i cheated the actual experience we had. now i just feel like i have to be even more skeptical of people's photos on social media and such. someone who captures a real moment similar to this with the sun flare feeling of warmth will probably just be thought to have used an app to edit it that way. bummer duuuude. the true photo of this is below.

aww yeah...good and grey. pacific northwest style (with a little help from vsco cam app). completely different though, yeah? 

anyhoo...

i love taking the ferry! it makes me feel like i'm really gooooing somewhere, without really going too far at all.

um hellooooo, coupeville! so quaint! this is where they filmed the town scenes in practical magic. << this clip also shows a bit of a scene at their house, which was filmed at san juan county state park. peter and i camped right thereeeeeee some years ago. KOOL HUH!? i thought so. i love dat movie. someone left it onnnn the porrrrrch! (ps isn't it wild that you can find a clip of basically every obscure movie line on youtube these days? i used to say that with my friend all the time. still funny to me.)

thanks to my pal whitney (whom hails from whidbey island) for all the good recommendations!

we went to toby's tavern in coupeville, where pete enjoyed a muy grande pile of fresh mussels and we had garlic bread and beer. it is a funky cool place! and we bought the most delicious buttery coconut chocolate chip cookie from the counter before we left. must recreate soon.

we drove up to deception pass to find one of the few campsites that are open during the winter. such pretty views! even in the gloominess of the pacific northwest winter, i think this is really beautiful. 

the campsite we found was supa depressing to me. it was in the "woods" somewhere off the highway, all the sites were really close together, and everyone was just sitting inside their RV's watching tv on their big screens.. i just don't get that. you're camping, people! at least pretend that you like being outside. so we pressed on to another campground that we saw was open at fort casey state park.

flamingos!?

these large rain puddles/reservoirs looked really pretty with the mountain range reflecting. already ten notches better than the other campground, and we hadn't even arrived yet.

pete & the trusty cheddar bus! one of these photos was featured on this blog. i looked at their instagram, and ludacris has something to do with it. soo that's neato i suppose. ya know, area codes and stuff.

happy campers! the campground at fort casey is super wide open and right next to the port townsend ferry (also pretty much a big area full of RV's), but we liked it here way way way better than the other option. its right on the water and you can walk around the fort and see these awesome views.

can ya see our teeny cheddar bus down yonder? also, the rocks were so pretty and colorful down by the water! ^^^

after i put together this post from our west coast road trip last summer, i realized i should have taken more photos of what the inside of the bus looks like while we're camping. its such a hilarious dump.

my mannn petah built us a quality fire before we fixed ourselves our romantiq valentine's day spaghetti dinner. i don't think we've ever made spaghetti while camping, but it was good. and we had some wine that we'd been saving from my friend's winery. we only got to enjoy the fire for a short bit before it started raining. and continued raining allllllll night and allllllll the next morning. the bus is super cozy to sleep in when its raining, though. we took off in the morn and waited to cook our camp brekky at home instead of making it in the rain. 

it was a delightful valentine's day out! :)

xoxoxo

 

 

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cabo san lucas, mexico.

pete and i jetted off to mexico for a week at the end of january.  we stayed in cabo san lucas at the pueblo bonito rosé resort. we had a lot of fun in the sunnnn. we'd hang by the beach all day and have endless coronas con limón y margaritas y chips y guac. too many of all those things, actually. but we enjoyed ourselves. 

here are a bunch of photos from our week.  all from my iphone 6. and some silly bonus photos from our crappy disposable waterproof camera.

many thanks to my parentals for coordinating our week at pueblo bonito via their timeshare :)

we were besties with all the servers. our favs: ricardo, davíd, javier, armando, jerry, y hector. thanks for tromping through the sand to deliver us so many delightful eats and drinks everyday, fellas :)

pete and i are HUGE fans of locals sandals. best drug store sandals in the world haha. you get them in hawaii, though. both times we've gone to hawaii together, we buy em all up! they are freakishly comfortable once you wear them in; we've walked miles and miles in these babies. i love em.

ooooooo our heart swan towels looked all romantiq when the sun came up. actually, i took a towel folding class by the pool one morning, haha. because, why not? i learned how to make elephants, swans, turtles, and a basket! 

vacation shirt pete, just doin what he do.

yayayayy for vacations in january, the monday of months.

 

and some really blurry underwater camera photos: 

(we bought the camera the day after we had gone snorkeling.....why?! i dont know. the day we snorkeled, it was with two big sea lions and the hugest school of fish i ever did see! i thought it was a bigass boulder, but it was a humongous school of fish. sea lions were swimming by us and swimming through the fish and playing around. it was so cute. then i swam through a patch of tiny jelly fish that i didn't even see at all, and my skin started burning all over.  i had a bunch of stings on my arm and leg that turned into rashes. nobody peed on me, if you were wondering. i just let it do its thing and it was fine the next day. we saw a bunch of pretty colored fishes, too, by the way!)

gracias for the sunshine & fun times, mexico! that gorgeous turquoise water was just what our souls needed in the depths of this grey seattle winter!  

 

 

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