weekend on lopez island.

ahoy!

pete and i spent the weekend on lopez island in the san juans. we are so lucky to be able to go up there as often as we do. its such a laid back, slow-paced, and friendly community of folks. not to mention b e a u t i f u l.

here are some snaps from my iphone 6.

^ just enjoying a bask in a grassy knoll by the water with our friend, mr. american bald eagle. we saw several bald eagles that day, actually. 

we rode our bikes over to pete's aunt & uncle's house one afternoon, and ended up hanging out there with his uncle lark and cousin peri all evening. i've probably mentioned here before how much i loooove their house that uncle lark built. so magical and fairy tale like out in the woods of the island. downright talented folks in this family, by the way. 

lark is a glass blower and used to hand blow these beer yards as prizes for the lopez island brew festival. he told us that glass beer yards came to be back in the day so that people could easily hand beer up to carriage drivers that were seated way up high. i never knew! just thought it was some sort of las vegassy gimmick. but ze beer yard served a real purpose. and he gave this one to pete! now if only we could find a safe place to store this thing in our house......

^ just roasting snausages with lark's glass blowing tools. naturally.

below is pete's parents cabin. built in 1890! we think it is now the oldest structure on the island. pretty crazy!

this is a great place to just walk around, bike, picnic, read, visit. which is exactly what we did.

back to the mainland. and for a stop at the skagit tulip festival :) more photos to come. 

another lovely lopez island weekend in the books. 

qp

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

qp