Where do we go from here?

Plane over wires

What do you do with a travel blog when you’re finished with your travels? When your days now differ significantly from the days spent wandering freely, exploring and adventuring, to abruptly searching for a job, being in a city and looking out the same damn window every day. Suddenly your nights are not spent stargazing or dancing on a beach in the tropics. Responsibilities ensue. Don’t get me wrong, with all of these changes comes the joy of being with family and friends and we’re surrounded by wonderful people who love us. These are all the things I missed the most.

I’m not saying we’ll never travel again, but for now, we’re settling in. We’re starting a garden, working, paying rent; all the typical stuff that has nothing to do with traveling.

I have grown somewhat attached to this blog and the amazing folks who have faithfully followed us on our journey over the last year; however what is it they say about a dead horse?

We’ve been back home for about a month. It has taken longer than I expected to adapt, although I am getting there. I have realized that a purpose to one’s life is what drives us. It gives our life meaning and satisfaction. Not that I’m asking you to define my purpose in life, but I am asking that you offer up your brilliant, creative, funny, dirty, I don’t care, any thoughts are great thoughts, for my next blog. I need you. It must involve photography. That’s the only rule. Give it to me!

Where do we go from here?

By the way, our book is in the making. We are so close to finishing it and we’re excited to share it with you.

Our local farm stand

Blossoms

Santa Barbara Mission

A house, on a street, in a town.

Aloha! Life on the farm

Monkey Pod tree

Welcome to the jungle! It’s a wet, green, teeming with life, flowery and splendid tropical jungle. We are woken every morning by the sounds of this mysterious place. It resembles being woke up by hundreds of cuckoo clocks striking Twelve at the same time. I imagine… We’ve taken to the farm quite quickly and nicely. The first day spent acquainting ourselves with the land, the other people on the farm and gathering coconuts from neighboring trees, well, I watched but Shawn got right in there. Coco’s are a staple here. There’s an abundance of them as well as Papayas, Noni, Bananas and a variety of garden vegetables. We’re eating well, that’s for sure. I was introduced to the garden by Caroline a Girl from Quebec who had WWOOF’d for quite some time, mostly in Europe. I’m so grateful for her guidance and the time we spent in the treehouse sipping coffee and eating chocolate. She left a few days ago for another Island. Another experience. We’ve spent a lot of time cleaning. We realized almost immediately that we were sharing our room with critters so that became our priority and now it seems we are pest free. It helps that we bring kitty in to our room to sleep at night. Shawn has been diligent with eliminating the little rodents from rest of the house as well, which is communal so a little more difficult since everyone has a different idea of cleanliness. We’re working on it. There are wild chickens everywhere here, wild pigs, which I had to chase out of the garden the other day and then there are the spiders the size of Kansas and centipedes 5 inches long! It’s been an extremely exciting first week. We’re actually having a pretty significant storm right now and have endured incredible amounts of rain. There are downed trees, power outages and yesterday the river on the property reached new heights. The Chickens had to be moved in a frenzy as the water rose dangerously close to their coop. We spend our days on the, we work in the mornings, me in the garden and Shawn works with the guys on finishing up the construction on the main house. We ride bikes down to the beach after work, a beautiful 3 minute ride from the farm. We’ve only left the area twice and that was Saturday to hitchhike 30 miles north to a farmers market and on Sunday we went to another organic farm up the road where they had a raw food dinner. Pizza and salad, it was amazing! They played music, we danced and met some really nice people. All in all we are grateful to be here, in spite of its challenges and we’re looking forward to some nicer weather so we can explore Kauai and all its glory.

A tree house on the farm, utilized by Yvette and her son Dylan

Our room from one of the gardens

Inside our room

The outhouse. NO room for modesty here.

From City to Gritty

Only in Portland

We left the colorful city of Portland a few days ago and now we’re getting ready for the next big thing. It will be quite different from the gray skies and bare trees of Portland. It won’t be all about Indie music and hipster culture. We won’t be able to find a microbrewery on every corner or a dive bar within arms reach. We’ll miss their enthusiasm for coffee shops, food trucks and of course VooDoo Doughnuts! But we’re ready to put the winter clothes away and spend some time on an organic tropical farm in Hawaii. We’re looking forward to getting our hands dirty on this trip!

City Bikes!

Feeling the Love

A gift from the sea

What a special day this has been! We are thrilled to be chosen by Betty Londergan for the Versatile Blogger Award. Betty is the Author of one of our favorite blogs heifer12x12 Thank you Betty!

As the proud recipient of this award we must now fulfill our duties, yes there are duties!

1♥ Select and list 15 bloggers who we nominate, these are in no particular order and we love them all!

The blonde coyote

pretty pictures

For the love of wanderlust

Annika Ruohonen

Naive Test

long time spent

Little london observationist

Collette falls on her feet

My Italian letters

Claire Atkinson photography

booshy

Malate

Nitty gritty dirt man

The lazy photographer

Travelbug

2♥ List 7 things about us you may not know

We love cheese

We love Bikes

We like slow food (the opposite of fast food) What is slow food?

We are not vegetarian

We were both born on the 16th

We have a vast age difference

We like Stephen Hawking

3♥ Now we must go inform the nominees.

4♥ Thank the person who nominated you. Thank you Betty!

A happy and beautiful day of Love to all of you! ♥

 

 

 

Photos for a winter’s day

A lonely barn in winter

Frozen in time

Covered bridge series, Scio Oregon

Rivers edge

Orchard in winter

Through and through

Ghostly church on a winter's night

Soon we will be leaving winter behind for a tropical Island in the sun!