Weekly Newsletter – Mashley’s Adventures – Planning and Packing

(Pictures are all available in an album in FaceBook.)

Current Location: Bremerton, Washington

There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh


This past week has been full of working adventures. Ashley’s been busy learning about the company, Marit (the owner), and trying to get everything organized for both of them. She’s already made noticeable improvements.

With so much time focused on work, we’ve been exploring locally. Thursday we had supper with Marit’s family and then walked over to a nearby pub for trivia night (which we failed at pretty spectacularly). It was a blast!

Sunday we drove up to Bainbridge Island to check out a nearby community. It was a beautiful place to walk around and explore the shops. We particularly enjoyed “Classic Cycle” – they have a bicycle museum spread among the shop. How fascinating to see bicycles that made history (land speed records, etc) and examples of old bicycles (1880s bike, anyone?) along with jerseys, biographies, and pictures of the people who rode them. classiccycleus.com/

A stationary shop in Bainbridge also had the card shown above. How perfectly accurate this quote is! We’re going to hang it in the RV.

Yesterday evening we finally made it to the weekly farmers’ market. Everything looked so good! We’ll definitely be picking up some things next week, beyond a flower bouquet for work. They even had a booth selling pasties – making us think of both Jim Guiney and our time in Michigan!

Ashley’s been really enjoying her yoga classes. She has a monthly pass and is definitely getting her money’s worth from that! There are a few things, beside the people, that we miss about living a stationary life. For Ashley, regular yoga classes are near the top of her list.

The garden is growing like crazy. With three of us and regular rain showers it’s easy to not visit for a couple of days, only to be shocked at how much everything has grown since the last time! We’ve enjoyed a couple of salads already, pulled up a radish last night, are still harvesting raspberries, and have plenty more on the way. Jalapenos and bell peppers are there, if a bit small still. Even the zombie lettuce is doing well! Before the garden was in place we bought a “live lettuce” and after picking and eating the leaves we decided to try re-planting it – and it’s growing yet again!

Tomorrow morning we’re heading out for our weekend adventure, a backpacking trip up to Royal Basin in Olympic National Park. Our bags are currently scattered out around us as we repack for the trip. With plenty of practice, it’s just a matter of making sure we put back items that we had to wash and dry after our last trip. Plus refilling the food stash. (That’s an important detail!)

    Lessons Learned (or relearned):

  • It’s amazing how quickly time flies!
  • Work takes up a lot of time and energy.
  • Sometimes a boring, old normal week at home is just what you need to get
    back in to adventuring mode.

The three of us sat down on Tuesday and looked at our schedule for the month of July. Between work and planned trips I think that there are two days all month that aren’t already accounted for! More Olympics, Mt Rainier, & Cascades here we come!

Local and loving it,

Matthew & Ashley