Thinking of getting a gift card to a coffee shop for your caffeine addicted friend or family member?  Take it a step further and get them a reusable coffee mug.

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The part of camping I’ve always hated is digging into the cooler full of half-melted ice to pull up food that’s probably not adequately chilled to try to make a home cooked meal when you don’t even have a kitchen.  I don’t mind backpacking food.  It’s all dehydrated so you don’t have the bobbing for food situation, and you’re so hungry by the time you make dinner on a backpacking trip that a cardboard box would taste like the best meal ever.  But camping and day hikes don’t produce the same kind of voracious hunger, so on this trip we decided we were eating out. Read more…

I’m not the world’s best packer.  On the first round, I think I need to bring everything I could ever possibly need for the rest of my life.  I prepare for heatwaves, cold snaps, headaches, yetti attacks, and luggage that doesn’t make it to it’s final destination.  Then when my suitcase is over-stuffed and way too heavy, I start frantically chipping away at the heap without enough in the way of rhyme or reason.  This is why I ended up in Seattle in September with two summer skirts and a sundress I never even thought about wearing, yet no sneakers. Read more…

On Thursday we drove out to the Hoh Rainforest, past Lake Crescent again.  We could have camped out that way, but it’s actually, at least according to the book we had, hard to find a campground with hot showers in Olympic National Park.  While I could survive without a hot shower, I sure do like them, especially if we’re not backpacking and do plan to hit town on a daily basis.  And this was, after all, our vacation, so we gave in to the luxury of cleanliness.  Plus, I was kind of addicted to falling asleep to the sound of the waves — better than the old Sharper Image sound machine I used to have.  Read more…

We spent the first couple days of our trip in Seattle (and got to go to the enormous REI store, which is like the mothership for people like me).  I’m not big on touristy stuff, and neither is J.  I hate crowds, and don’t tend to enjoy any sort of attractions that have a snow globe in their honor, so we avoided the Space Needle. Read more…

So, my blogcation was also a vacation.  I didn’t just take a break from the internet, I took a break from the house, the garden, and well, everything else.  I really needed it.  Short of a few scattered weekend camping trips, and two treks out to the Adirondacks for a couple of days at a time, J and I haven’t had a vacation since we got married 4 1/2 years ago.

Mark hypothesized that I was  probably off “mothering orphaned seals” or testing my “new solar powered aircraft.”  Sadly, I wasn’t.  I’ll save that for my next vacation, but if anyone has an orphaned seal they want to send my way, the bathtub is free.

So, here’s what I was doing.

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I remember a radio commercial from way back that had someone singing, “take the train to the plane, take the train to the plane.”  But Carbonfund.org has a good reason for just taking the train on your next trip.

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