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2016 wrap up

My official degree!

The second half of 2016 was a whirlwind. After graduating and leaving Boise, Kevin and I drove across the country (again) to leave Meeko at my sister’s apartment so we could fly out of Boston airport to Iceland and Paris.

Thanks to cheap flights, that monthly discount on Airbnb, and a limited food budget (mostly baguettes), Kevin and I stayed in Paris for a month. This was Kevin’s first international trip, so it felt really special to share something that has been so important with him.

Hanging out in Paris
The chandelier at Palais Garnier (Paris Opera House)

We spent most of our time going to museums and gardens, with bakery stops in between.

I still owe Kevin back for the trip (because you know I didn’t have that kind of money saved up on a graduate student salary!), but between my graduating and him starting his own MFA program this fall, we agreed it was worth the risk while we had the free time.

After Paris we drove back across the country and stopped in Laramie to find a place to live. We snagged a still-being-renovated apartment with a fenced yard which Meeko was very excited about. The apartment is one of four in a renovated, hundred year old house. Two of our windows have breaks in the glass. The bathroom was built on what used to be a deck. But, it is almost twice the size of our Boise apartment… for the same price. While I’d hoped to find a place in a newer building for the sake of cheaper heat, Kevin and I stuck to our budget and signed a 10 month lease. The whole time we were apartment hunting in Laramie, we stayed in another Airbnb in Northern Colorado where our host made us delicious breakfast every morning. Meeko made friends with the black lab, and overcame her fear of the deck.

A familiar sight. This has been the best roadtrip car!

At the end of the summer, we spent a month living in Nampa with his mom while I commuted to Boise to teach two summer camps for a new startup. After that, it was off to Laramie, officially! I put my budget organizing and decorating skills to use and hit up Craigslist, yard sales, and the local oddity/flea market, Bart’s. (If you are ever driving on I-80 and need a place to stop and walk around, go check out Bart’s! You never know what you’re going to find there. Except wagon wheels, there’s always wagon wheels.)

Meeko enjoying the couch.

The best find was a brown couch with an embroidered scene of horses running across the plains. Too perfect.

It took a while to get settled in Laramie, and I am still figuring out the best way to cobble together multiple streams of income while I build up my new business. But, the cost of living is pretty low out here. I don’t go out to do much other than events with the University of Wyoming’s MFA program. A few years ago I might not have liked that, but right now, it is kind of perfect. I spend seven days a week working on projects from home, writing, consulting, building up my websites, and constantly looking to that future I hope to have.

3rd Street in Laramie, on the edge of downtown.

Kevin is loving his program, I’m enjoying how much I can focus on work here, and Meeko is eating all the snow she can. On to 2017!

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Yellowstone National Park

I had time for one short road trip before my summer job(s) got going, so Kevin and I decided to drive to Yellowstone National Park. Neither of us had been before, and despite researching and staring at maps, we didn’t know what to expect. I saw a lot of animals– grizzly bears, black bears, bison, deer, mule deer, elk, pika, ravens, osprey, voles, chipmunks, and many other birds as well. On the second night, we heard a pack of coyotes howling outside of our campground. Meeko had to stay home for this trip, so she had her own stay-cation with a friend of mine.

Another thing I didn’t realize about Yellowstone is that the park is pretty built up. If someone wanted, they could eat all their meals at restaurants, stay in hotels, and have hot showers every day. Or, if camping and cold water are more your style, there’s that option too. Winter lasts for about 8 months there, so the summer months get very busy with visitors. Even though during the day I was hiking in light long pants and a light sweatshirt (unless I was in the direct sun), our campsite dropped to 30 degrees F in the nighttime. Brrrr. Three of the four nights a thunderstorm happened right over our campground. Yellowstone weather is quite unpredictable, so pack everything.

Here are some pictures from the trip!

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Eureka, California

A year and a half or so ago, I moved to Boise for graduate school and my best friend Julie moved to Eureka, California. A twelve hour drive apart was the closest we’d lived to each other since back in our high school days when we shared a yellow school bus route and biked to each other’s houses (in between homework, a plate full of extra curriculars, and mowing our parents’ extensive lawns).  This Thanksgiving Break I finally made the drive south to Julie’s and Meeko got to meet her puppy-cousin Remi.

Here are the pictures from our trip!

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Ghost Towns part 2

Rocky Bar, Idaho. Home to exactly four people, none of whom came out of their houses to say hello. I’m not actually sure if any of the four residents were around that day. The occupied houses in the town had multiple “no trespassing” and “private property” signs. The town welcome sign warned of old people and guns, sarcastically I hope.

Welcome to Rocky Bar, Idaho
Welcome to Rocky Bar, Idaho

At it’s height, this town had a population of 2,500. At one point, it was considered for the capital city of the Idaho Territory. A fire hit, the gold rush trickled down, and slowly everyone left. It seems that much of the present-day population of small mountain towns like this are part-time residents. People who escape to their cabin in the woods for the summer, or on weekends, and head back down for the rest of the year.

Don't go into the cellar, Meeko! Don't you watch scary movies?
Don’t go into the cellar, Meeko! Don’t you watch scary movies?

There wasn’t much to explore because there wasn’t much left, but the rusting furniture and mysterious saloon/repair shop was enough to get my creepy-town fix for a while. Meeko was especially interesting in all the animal poop on the floor of these homes and the stuffing falling from the attics. I’d read on another ghost town website that old safes were pretty common to find at these towns, but it was rare to find a safe that hasn’t been cracked open already. I found my first out in the middle of nowhere safe, but its lid was cracked completely open, the inside filled with sand.

Rocky Bar, Idaho is a good one-time trip. I wouldn’t say an entire trip would be worth it just to see that town, but it worked into our route from Atlanta, Idaho back to Boise.

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Ghost Towns in Idaho Part 1

I’ll be the first to admit I have a problem. I feel a strange connection to ghost towns. Abandoned mines, crumbling cabins, and the wild slowly eating a town back into the forest. I’d been to some other ghost towns, mainly in Nevada (gold rushes and similar phenomena tend to leave a trail of abandoned towns in its wake). It turns out Idaho had its own gold rush, silver rush, and gem rush.

Kevin and I headed three hours North of Boise, Idaho to check out two such towns. One Atlanta, Idaho, once home to 17,000 people as a tent city… now home to about 40 residents.

Forest fires have slowed down tourism to Atlanta, ID forcing a lot of local businesses to close. With projects like The Atlanta School and a hot springs nearby, the residents are hoping to draw more people out along the forest service roads.

But of course, “not too many people.”

I was very intrigued by Atlanta, Idaho. I loved the dirt, washboard roads maintained by the Forest Service. From the burned forests, bright wildflowers grew thick on the ground. The rivers following the roads were clear, cold, and without any trace of trash. Everyone in Atlanta was welcoming, encouraging us to explore the town on foot and leave my little car parked. With no cell phone service or internet, it was a place to truly unplug. I’m sure I will be back soon.

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And now I live in Boise

Everyone I’ve met has said, “you’ll love it here!” I’m only going on 5 days in my new home, and I can agree, I have a good feeling about this place.

After driving all night Friday, sleeping for two hours in a gas station parking lot with my head resting on Meeko’s bed, the dogs and I rolled up the driveway of our new home. I’m in the suburbs of Boise with a new roommate/landlord and his two german shepherd dogs. I unpacked the extremely stuffed Honda Fit (yes, my car still needs a name) and took a long nap on the floor in a pile of my bedding.

Within a few days I bought all the furniture I would need. In my many moves, I have finally learned my lesson- buy collapsable furniture! Now I have two metal shelving units that come completely apart, a foldable bench so the dogs can look out our window during the day, and two desks whose legs come off. If I had to move again in Boise, I could fit everything in two car trips easily.

Another good lesson for cheap moving: sell your old furniture on craigslist and then buy what you need from craigslist when you arrive. I can honestly say my Boise craigslist experience has been the most pleasant of any city. Everyone I met was extremely kind, helped me carry furniture without me even asking, and were happy to offer me local advice. Everyone also offered for me to keep their numbers and to call or email if I ever needed anything (or if I just wanted to hang out!) Yes, I actually made friends through craigslist.

Boise seems like this hidden gem of extremely nice (though admittedly, not very racially diverse) people. I wonder why more people wouldn’t want to live here. It’s almost like Brigadoon, fog and smoke included. There are occasional wildfires in the mountains. Walking around Boise State’s campus, I realized people passing by were smiling at me. Was there something on my face?? Were my shorts too short? Nope-they were just being friendly!

I’m still winding down from my first day of my teaching orientation. I can’t believe that I’m really here. Me, a graduate student, and a teacher in about a week. Meeting my fellow MFA cohort and the MA students as well made me realize we are all in the same boat. Everyone is a little nervous. Most of us are wondering if this is all a huge mistake. But, we all know by the end of the semester, all this worrying will seem so silly… the novice will become the expert!

In moving to Idaho and realizing how little I (and perhaps most of the world?) know about this area, I’m going to make a big effort to revamp my blog. I hope to capture not only my experiences teaching and being a student, but also what there is to do in Idaho and the Northwest. Thanks for reading!

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Our new place!

After two weeks of unpacking, errands, and figuring out where the dogs should go pee, I am ready to start writing again!

By some miracle Ashwin found us a very nice place in the neighborhood of Nob Hill. There are six apartments in our building, and we are on the top floor. The ground floor has a small market, which is very convenient. I wave hello to one of the guys that works there every morning. He also touched up the paint in our apartment while we moved in.

I’d like to state for the record that there was no moving crew. It was just Ashwin and I, moving the rest of his things from his old apartment to our new one with a U-Haul. I’ve never been so happy to see a split box spring! When we emptied out the car it was a very strange feeling. I’d been living surrounded by my things for over a month and to seeing it spread out made me realize how full the car had really been! Between the various spices that had spilled and the vinegar spill back in North Carolina, the car was not smelling good at all once it had baked empty in the sun for a few days. Had I just gotten used to it??

So far Snickers’ least favourite thing about San Francisco is the hills. Specifically the one we live on. It is actually at 45 degrees. At first, I was having them go potty in the little dirt squares around the street trees on our hill, but Snickers was really having a tough time balancing while she peed. And then it would all just run down the hill. Now we go around the corner to a nice flat street, four times a day.

I am so glad that my trip is over as I am really anxious to get writing! It is hard to believe that August is here already–only four months until my first graduate school application is due.

Location: Home in San Francisco, CA

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$2,224.38

That is how much traveling across the country for a month and a half has cost.

When I first started this trip, I estimated I would spend around $1000 on gasoline and perhaps another $1000 for everything else. Turns out I was not far off– but this number would have been much worse if not for all of the places I was able to stay for free. From new friends to family members, every stay helped tremendously, and every dinner I was treated to was greatly appreciated!

For anyone considering a trip across the country, this will at least give you some idea of what to expect. A few disclaimers though– I do not mind staying in super cheap hotels. I’m talking so cheap you wear your sandals in the shower just in case. Dogs complicated this at times, but overall I was not looking for “nice” places to stay. “Decent” was more the word I had in mind. Same thing goes for food, healthy and cheap, and then road snacks. (I spent $64.77 total at gas stations on snacks)

Finally, my car took Premium gasoline only. Ouch.

Totals:
HOTELS     $784.90
GASOLINE $784.32
FOOD           $347.97
GROCERY    $166.78
TOURISM    $115.41
SERVICES   $25

GRAND TOTAL: $2,224.38*

*This number does not include the turquoise jewelry I bought nor the time I had to buy more flea oil for the doggies.

Snickers says “Money is boring. Have you seen this window??”
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A Weekend in Carmel, California.

We spent this weekend in a beach town called Carmel. The first beach is a state park, and the second beach is in the more upscale part of town. The second beach allowed off leash dogs, and Meeko quickly made lots of friends Friday afternoon.

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A Temporary Home

We’ve been so busy bouncing from hotel to hotel that I haven’t had a chance to update!

Last week Sunday, we finished up our scenic tour of the California Coast, arriving at our Sacramento Residence Inn hotel around 1 AM. Along the way the dogs explored an outdoor mall, we played on another beach before getting talked to by another life guard, and we watched another sunset reflect off the ocean.

When my family moved from Tokyo to Buffalo, New York, we lived at a Residence Inn for 3 months. It was February, 1999 and it was very, very cold. We didn’t know where we wanted to live yet, nor where my sister and I should go to school. For a while, we spent our days exploring the scraggly woods in the hotel’s lot and then warming up by the big wood fireplace in the lobby. After Japan, seeing snow everyday seemed very exciting. Once we did start school, we would do our homework in that same lobby, making hot chocolate and eating the free food. Now, whenever I stay at a Residence Inn, I sometimes get that feeling of home when I recognize some of the familiar aspects, like their fireplaces in the lobby.

This time around, I was most excited about having a mini kitchen and being able to do laundry– I hadn’t gotten a chance to do any since staying in Corpus Christi! It took 3 dryer cycles and many quarters, but having clean socks again was totally worth it.

Lured by a hotel promo, Ashwin had us switch hotels in the middle of the week. It was stressful for all of us, and unfortunately we ended up losing money on it after the first Residence Inn decided to charge us the $100 pet fee after all. By the end of the week, the dogs and I were not in the best of moods, yearning for the promise of domestic peace in our new apartment. If I had run an experiment on my own emotions throughout this trip, I think I reached my breaking point of enjoying being on the road at around the 1 month mark. Right now, I dream of an empty car and eating off of actual dishes!

Location: Sacramento, CA