First Day of Spring

How can such a cloudy, drizzley day be the first day of spring? There are no butterflies or bees hanging around our back patio and it's only 44 degrees outside. From what I understand, we won't even get spring time weather for another month here in Seattle. That is a total bummer. 

On the other hand, that fact does give me a bit more time to plan the container garden I am going to start. Since this will be my first time growing plants to eat, I am going to start with easy crops like potatoes, zucchini, baby lettuce, peas, tomatoes and strawberries. I might throw a few herb plants out there too - like mint and lemon balm. I really need to get my on potato and pea planting. Their planting time is now! I'll keep you updated on how things go with the gardening. 

Until then, we will keep enjoying our produce from the Full Circle Farms delivery box we have signed up for. We get fresh, local, organic produce every other week delivered to our doorstep!

Above is a picture of one of our first boxes! We've been getting them since December and it is still amazingly exciting every time. It is always a lovely surprise what produce we get in our box (though you can pick & choose if you want to so it doesn't have to be a surprise). 

I love our produce box because one of my goals in life is to eat locally and this delivery allows me to do so without breaking the bank! Matt and I still run supplemental trips to the grocery store for specific produce and other grocery items but I love the seasonal produce and I keep trying new recipes because of it!

Anyway, I gotta run. More updates later.

Please let me out of this car

Route Map thanks to Google Maps!

As I posted previously, Matt and I made it safely to Seattle. We drove the 35 hours and 2,083 miles in 3 days. When we were picking our route we decided to travel West out of Texas to New Mexico then Northwest through Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Oregon before reaching Washington. This way, we could see as much of the U.S. terrain as possible and the route had plenty of small towns to stop at for snacks and gas.

The view in Colorado from the car

Unfortunately, picking this route meant we spent half of the first day just trying to get out of Texas! That darn state is ginormous and there isn’t a lot to see in West Texas besides cattle. After that we hit New Mexico, which has even less to see from the highway but at least we were allowed to travel at 75 mph. The creepy barrenness of New Mexico convinced us it would be best to stop in Albuquerque a few hours early for the night or face being stranded in the desert at night once we got too tired to drive.

On our second day, we drove through more of dusty New Mexico then we hit a dramatic biome change when we came to Colorado! For a bit we were surrounded by mountains, green trees and motorcyclists. Soon after that we reached Utah and enjoyed more canyons and dust. We were determined to get really far on the second day so we drove on to Twin Falls, Idaho where the air reeks of cow poo. It was well past dark when we reached our hotel thus it wasn’t until morning when we were leaving Twin Falls that we noticed the HUGE Snake River Canyon we had driven over last night just outside of the city. Ahh! What a sight to see and drive over in the early morning.

Apparently they have quite a few dairy farms in Idaho, which explains the heavy scent of cow pies on the air. We saw (instead of just smelled) the dairy farms on our drive and enjoyed debating about what kind of food was growing in all the farm fields we passed by. The next state we drove through was Oregon which was fairly similar to Idaho as far as we could see. We did learn that Oregon is a full service ONLY state (Oregon and New Jersey are the only two full service states in the U.S.) and that Matt hates the idea paying a premium price for someone else to pump his gas.

Halfway through day three we FINALLY reached the Washington state border. Once we crossed the Washington border the scenery began beautiful quickly. We drove through Washington wine country and enjoyed seeing all the vineyards and fruit trees. The last few hours we spent driving through Washington took the longest and were the most painful to drive just because we were so desperate to reach Seattle! We were counting down the miles there at the end.

Such a welcome sight!

Our drive was not full of misadventure (which I am so thankful for) considering how we packed our car full of necessities and had two bikes strapped to the back. If I could do this trip again, I would bring better tunes to listen to and better snacks to eat while we drove. We supported Subway consistently, drank Jamba juice for dinner twice and ate enough gummi worms to make me want to vomit.  In truth, the drive was not nearly as awful as I thought it would be. Matt and I made wonderful car buddies and switching off driving every 3 hours helped to keep us from going looney until the very end. Also, I think the Stephen King novel, titled Duma Key, we listened to was the key to our success because whenever we ran out of words for one another we could always travel to Duma Key, Florida and pretend we weren’t trapped in the car.

Our "stuff." Not very much, eh?

Now that we have signed our lease, we are just waiting for our other belongings to meet up with us so that we can resume “normal” life. Our apartment is lonely and empty without our stuff. Most days, I hate the idea of “stuff” but I am so accustomed to having my possessions available that I feel nearly naked without them. Cross your fingers that it reaches us all safely! 

Speaking of "stuff" here are two relevant youtube videos on the topic that I really enjoy: The Story of Stuff & George Carlin talks about "Stuff" Enjoy!