On the Road Again!

We last left you in Panama, which if you remember, wasn’t our favorite stop. Since then, we returned to the Philadelphia area to check in with dentists, doctors, and to renew prescriptions (ah, the joys of aging!) and most importantly to see family and friends. Thank you all for taking the time to visit with us. You are what we miss most during our travels.

Nancy and family, John and his brother , and meals together.

….and if we didn't see you, we're back in town from June 23-30. Then Aruba…. come on down!

Our first rental was in Prospect Park, PA. We thought it would be easy commuting distance to Philly and it was more reasonable (cheaper) than renting/parking in Center City. Turns out, we had a host who was a little strange. Since we were back in the USA, we decided to get a few things from Amazon. The first order arrived, and John found it on the front steps even though we had specifically written on the order that we were on the side entrance. The next day we received a text from Amazon saying the second order was delivered, but when John went to look, there was no package on any of the steps. We both thought the package was stolen. The next day Nancy caught up with the Amazon driver and, while standing on our side porch told him about the stolen package and how we specified placing it on the side porch. About 10 minutes later, Nancy received the following text message from our host.

We’ve had Amazon packages delivered in Italy and Mexico and we never had anyone 1.) listen in on conversations, 2.) tell us that “If you intend to have deliveries here for legal purposes and documentation, please put in writing a request to receive mail/packages delivered to my home.” Hum, quite paranoid.

Another “funny little thing” was that she had a bowl of small pretzel packets (like those you get on an airplane) in a bowl in the living room. All of them had American Airlines logos on the packets. We later found out she had been a steward on AA. But the kicker was that there was a box next to the bowl that asked for donations if you ate any of the items in the bowl. We have good friends who have a beautiful home in Brigantine N.J, which they Airbnb and VRBO. They have all types of free goodies that are for the renters…at no additional cost.

We didn’t know how long we planned to stay in the Philly area, so we only had the Prospect Park house for a week. When we decided to stay a little longer, we moved to a great Airbnb in Center City with a parking garage in the building and a fantastic host.

While in Philly we were lucky enough to attend a lecture by John’s son Brad at the Abramson Pediatric Research Center in Philadelphia. It’s awesome to see your first born speak about his lab’s research at Stanford. Plus, they provided lunch!

Now, we may have mentioned that our next plan was to drive our little Mini Cooper convertible from Philly across the US to visit John’s sons in California. We mapped out destinations from Chicago (to visit one of Nancy’s late husband’s daughter, Debbie) to Minneapolis (which John loves for the great restaurants,) then any National Park we were near. Eventually making our way to San Mateo, California and then Malibu.

Sometime in our planning, we decided that we really didn’t want to drive through the long stretches of middle America. As we continued to plan, a new idea came to us…where might we want to live after our nomadic experience? We both decided it would probably be on the west coast where John’s grandkids (who are from 3-7) live.

More conversation brought us to the shared fact that we’d like to live near water, in an area that’s moderately close to an airport. It should also be close to a good hospital (again the getting old thing) and have a good food vibe. We finally decided to look at Washington, Oregon, and northern California.

But which places to visit? Here’s where AI helped. John had been playing around with ChatGPT, the new artificial intelligence program, and decided to give it a try. He asked it to name towns in the Pacific Northwest that were nice to live, were close to water, had good fishing, were easy access to an airport, had a good hospital system, and a decent food scene. After a lot of quizzing, we had a list of eight towns in Washington, eight in Oregon, and three in northern California. So, we bought plane tickets to Seattle, rented a car, and packed our bags for the next nomadic adventure.

Our first stop was Seattle on our way to Bainbridge Island. Seattle is a beautiful city with a dynamic downtown. We managed to find and board the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island! If you remember our disastrous ferry story from Sicily, you’ll be happy to know this ferry experience was a snap.

Bainbridge Island, Washington is a beautiful place with friendly people and beautifully landscaped homes on or near the water. Our rental was in a beautiful neighborhood awash in flowers.

In the two days we were there, we only looked at one place, which was too small and under a bridge that connected the island to another island. The others we could have visited were in the $3,000,000 range...way outside our budget. We passed on Bainbridge Island.

Our next stop was here in Olympia where we’re staying in a small but luxurious cabin on a beautiful little lake called Offutt Lake. We immediately loved the place and thought this was what we want! A decent size lake that is stocked, a great place where the family (and us) would be able to swim, fish, boat, kayak, etc. Our main rationale is finding a place where everyone, especially the grandkids, would love to come and visit. So far we've seen cormorants and a bald eagle (about 50 yards away)!

We spent most of the day yesterday with a great real estate agent, formerly a chef who takes his vacations to cities that have excellent food scenes (e.g. NYC, Charlotte, N.C. Phoenix, AZ, and we tried to convince him of Philadelphia, PA). He showed us three places. Two were blah, but one we loved as soon as we walked in. It had a great kitchen and living room with vaulted ceilings and a deck that looked out toward Mt. Rainer.

But, like many places, there were problems. The first was the property looked as though the owners had got it zoned for two properties. There was nothing next door, but there could be and the property line was ten feet from the edge of the house. But the major issue was getting to the water. The description of the place said the owner has the right to harvest shellfish in the Puget Sound, but getting down the hill to the water was impossible without steps. And, as the agent told us, Washington zoning would cost about $100,000 to allow for steps to be built. So much for that place.

So here we are, in Olympia for another few days. We plan to check out other areas nearby, go to a winery or two, fish, and plan our September trip to Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy.

And, not surprisingly, we are changing our plans again (ahh the joys of having no obligations). After further research, we have eliminated several of the towns we were going to see. Portland is next, possibly Eugene then Salt Lake City, Bryce and Zion before heading over to California.

Keep watching, plans can change at any time!

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