Wednesday, September 06, 2006

What have we been doing? Spring/Summer 2006

One word to describe us--BUSY! Back in May we again put Batwing on the hard so that we could escape the heat of summer in Mexico. We traveled north through California Oregon and WA visiting friends along the way. Check out the pics--Wayne and Tanya, Hubba, Dan, Ramone and Lew, Cindy and John, Judy and Bob, Nicole.
We even visited a couple national parks--JoshuaTree and Yosemite. Having had enough, we beelined it to Bellingham where we reunited with Erica and spent as much time as we could visiting with her between her studies and friends. This summer was the summer to attend both of Erica's college graduations--one for the College--Huxley and one for the University of Western Washington. She received the Thomas Huxley Award and was the student speaker at the Huxley graduation then went on to graduate cum laude with honors in
Environmental Science at the official Western Washington graduation. We are very proud of her! Check out her graduation gift from us (it is a Kahuna, made by the Feathercraft folding kayak company in Granville Island, Vancouver BC) which she plans to bring with her when she joins us in Jan for an"open ended" trip on Batwing.
Meanwhile, we are both working till Nov 1 earning more "cruising chips" for the coming sailing season. We hope to travel down the Mexican coast to Central America and Ecuador once we complete the work on Batwing that we started last year. That means we hope to go back in the water by Jan 2007--cross you fingers for us --we hope this last bit of work goes smoothly. Of course, we will inform you of what transpires.
There is still a bit of time to receive guests, Howard and Ann hope to make it out here end of September, and Brad just left after spending the Labor Day weekend with us. Being boatless, we have to enjoy the myriad of other activities that one can do here--kayak, hike, bike, and of course, pick berries! We have made it through salmon berries, thimble berries, raspberries, blueberries and now the end of backberry season is upon us. :( check out the pics of our wonderful cottage where we stay, formerly a chicken coop)--Ron even had a dream that a chicken pooped on his head while sleeping. We thank the Ellsworths, Joan and Steve for this great place--8 acres of lush tree covered property bordering the southern outlet of Lake Samish.