A Look Back

As Billy and I sit here tonight drinking a bottle of Marinus out of coffee cups (true high class trailer livin') we are reflecting on this past year and looking forward to this next one. We ran over to The Nugget grocery (I love The Nugget) and bought some weird indulgent goodies to ring in the new year. We have already been feasting on Point Reyes Blue Cheese with sundried tomato crostini and local pistachios, next will be asiago and pine nut ravioli with Sonoma Gourmet garlic sauce and we are capping it all off with vanilla rice pudding. I fully expect that I may puke before 2009 actually hits. Especially since this wine is so freaking good and I am sure to drink more of it than I should. If you are a wino I highly suggest indulging in this one. It is produced right in Carmel Valley. Good stuff. I should be more than moderately drunk by the time I finish this post. Or maybe I already am more than moderately drunk? You decide. Hic!

Anyway, I thought I would pull together a little photo essay of this past year of our lives for my last post of 2008. We had a good year that was peppered with a few weird patches but over all it was fun and interesting. This time last year we were in Texas. It seems like a million years ago! I think we stayed in last year and cooked black eyed peas. I forgot about black eyed peas this year somehow. Don't tell my Gram. She will be convinced that all will be in ruins by next Tuesday because we did not eat the peas. And she may well be right about that.

OK. I am going to post three pics for each month of the year. How does that sound? Here we go... January in Texas!

This was our campsite for the last few weeks we spent in Hill country. Nothing special... but the weather was nice.


On January 6th of last year we visited Texas Stonehenge. And I wore this outfit to Texas Stonehenge. That is a real live Stetson hat by the way. As I recall Rudy got really car sick that day. Or maybe my sense of style was making him puke. Who knows.

We ended the month of January by traveling the 8,890 miles across West Texas and up through New Mexico on our way to Santa Fe. We stopped off for a few days in Roswell. It was fun in the stupid way that you would expect it to be.


On to February... we arrived in Santa Fe where we put the Airstream in storage and rented a casita downtown. Rudy's birthday is on Valentine's Day. It was his first birthday and my Mom sent him a cake. As you can see he was really embarrassed.


Michelle and Casey bought Rudy his very own tiger for his birthday gift. I will let the picture do the rest of the talking on that one...


Michelle would come over at night and entertain us for hours by playing a tiny blue accordion.


And I have to sneak one more pic in here. Because one of the most important things about Santa Fe is the cherry pie at the Plaza Diner. I think we ate it at least twice a week for the 6 or so months that we were there.


March is when the weather starts to ease up in Santa Fe. You can get out and start to enjoy the sunshine and go hiking and stuff again. You can also practice amateur rock climbing if you are brave enough...

Our favorite mariachi band starting performing on the plaza in March...

And we took a trip up to Ojo Caliente to go hiking for the day and jump in the natural hot springs...


On to April... Billy gave a painting workshop in our living room.

We went hiking in the Pecos Wilderness and almost lost Rudy. For real. We almost had to leave his dumb ass behind because he ran off into the woods and we could not find him and it was getting dark, etc. etc. Anyway... he came back.

My cousin Chelsea came to visit us. She is my fave cousin and we had a great time hanging out.


May is a great month in Santa Fe. The weather is really warm, hot even. We celebrated Billy's birthday and spent a lot of time on the plaza and just hanging around town, going to the dog park and enjoying life.




Somehow the only pics I have from June are of Rudy from the park by the post office where we would take him to chase tennis balls. He loved it and so did we because it involved lots of laying around on the grass and laughing at dumb dog antics.




Sometime around July is when we got our new Nikon. I still love it.

This shot is from the 4th of July before the fireworks.

And July is when I cut my hair. This is the before shot... I don't know if I will ever let my hair grow that long again.


August... what the heck? August was huge. We left New Mexico in August and traveled across Utah and Nevada in to California. We spent my birthday in on of my favorite places on Earth, Monument Valley.




Then we headed up to Zion where we nearly died on the hike pictured below... we ran out of water and it was like 105 degrees that day. I don't recommend doing that. I recommend the hike... just not the shortage of water. Or nearly perishing... try to avoid that experience if you can.
Somewhere near Zion we found this cool little sand dunes state park. We had a blast wandering through there and letting Rudy run like the wind.

Then we hit Cali. Billy's Dad and little sisters had recently relocated here from the East coast and we hooked up for a visit outside Sacramento.


In September we hit the beach and Santa Cruz. It had been forever since we had been to the ocean and it was soooo nice. I love the redwood forests on the coast as well and we spent a few weeks hanging out in the area.




I am going to cap off with October because guess what... if you can't just page back a few posts to see November then you are lazy. Or I am lazy... maybe we are both lazy. October was when we were officially booted out of Big Sur when we lost our camp host positions and our plans for the winter crumbled before our very eyes. We headed back up to Carmel and settled in to the valley. The beach in Carmel became our daily addiction and Rudy's favorite place in the whole wide world.

We had a great month and spent a lot of time exploring...


The sea lions in Monterey are all yoga masters...



So there you have it.... A quick year in pictures. Who knows what 2009 will bring? As I write this we have NO idea what we are going to do or where we are headed. I have applied for national forest service jobs everywhere from Minnesota to Alaska. We are still considering heading back out to New England as well. We just have to see what cards we are dealt in the next few weeks. Not knowing is somewhat stressful but it is also exciting. We have nowhere that we HAVE to be right now. The choices laid out before us are almost too many.

All the best to you in the coming year. I think it is going to be a tough year for all of us no matter where we are or what we are doing. The world is in a shambles (worse than usual) But what goes down must eventually come back up right? To quote Mark Twain... "Only he who has seen better days and lives to see better days again knows their full value." Cheers!