Sorry everyone for the lack of updates recently and since the trip out west. I kept up pretty well on them while on vacation but we hit a couple spots were we couldn’t get service (wifi) and other times we were just so busy with all the sights to see.
Anyway, we have decided that Portland, Oregon is our next destination to live. We (Lauren and I) both have a love of Burlington but we’ve decided that it’s time for a change for a number of reasons: We’re sick of living with roomates and want our own place (we’re tired of hearing “it’s not mine, someone else did that”). We both have lived in Burlington for over 5 years each. Burlington is a stop over for so many of our friends that we feel a lot of our good friends have up and gone (not all though!). And most important we are simply interested in a change.
(Seattle Duck Tour)
I last left off talking about Portland and didn’t get a change to update about the rest of the places we went to. We enjoyed Seattle and Olympia and feel it’s a liveable place but there was a few turn offs. When we were heading into Seattle we were warned about bad traffic at all times of the day and as we got close we experienced it first hand. Literally, 80 miles from Seattle we came across four lanes of bumper to bumper stopped traffic. I thought “surely this is just a blip and not the whole way to Seattle”. I was wrong. The traffic would let up for about 3-5 miles and move at normal conjested speeds then come to a stop. Then let up again for 3-5 miles and then back to stopped traffic over and over until we got to the city. Ouch! Not for me…
Seattle also felt too much like a big city (which it is, duh!) but didn’t have the charm and more spread out feel as Portland did. The city was much smaller and clasterphobic feeling. Not my style in the least bit. I’m down to try the city living but not with a feel like that.
So on to Vancouver which Lauren basically hated. I understand why (it’s dirty, out dated architecture, and very, very expensive ie. $15 chicken fingers) but didn’t feel it was terrible. I think our view of it was somewhat skewed becuase of the sketchy hostile that we stayed in (hotels are $150+ for a standard room per night) which was on the edge of the rough part of town. We took a walk through the shady area and saw way to many homeless people everywhere (a ton of them!) as well as used seringes, methedone tubes, plenty of trash, panhandlers, and everything between. We ate lunch at a brew pub on a patio and was quickly hit up for change from a homeless man on the street. “I wanna eat Sh*t too” he tells us.
There was good parts of it for sure. The scenery from the city is spectacular. Vancouver is on a bay or the end of a bay and across the water from the city is a huge, amazing mountain range in plain sight. It also sports a very nice and large park which we spent some quality time in. Overall, it was nice to visit but I wouldn’t live there unless you paid me to.
From Vancouver we start our sight seeing part of the trip. We took highway 5 down to Seattle area then started our costal portion of the trip at Astoria where we met up with the famous, scenic Route 101. We enjoy the coast but know that it’s just something to see and not a viable option for living.
From Astoria we camp the three nights on our way to San Francisco in Astoria > Coos Bay > Eureka at KOA’s. The KOA’s range from nice to not so nice but we make it work and find ourselves in San Fran. for the last night of our trip. In SF we stayed with Lauren’s friend which is on the lower Haight St. area and full of things to do. We would probably pick SF as the place to move except it is just too expensive to live. We want our own place and two of Lauren’s friends that we talked to in SF both live with roomates and pay about 3 times as much as we do here in Burlington. It’s nice but not worth it when we know we like Portland (which is cheaper than Burlington) just as much.
Now it’s the start of planning to move for us. We’ll be in Burlington for at least a month and will pack things up to visit Michigan (Lauren’s home state) and Colorado (A bunch of my friends) before we end up in Portland. More about that all soon. Next up is our trip to Laconia where I’m from to let Lauren see it before we leave the East coast.