We were settled in for a nice Christmas at home

We were determined to stay put this year. Holiday travel in 2022 seemed like a fool’s errand between the industry created staffing shortages, unpredictable weather, and general decline of civility. We got through Christmas with a feeling of vindication. Rather than be stress over safely making it out of the driveway or the status of our flights, we cooked, rearranged our furniture, and generally stayed in pyjamas. We were so enthralled with this idea we took a full week off for this lazy staycation. So lazy, in fact, that after the roads cleared we got dinner delivered from a non-celebrating local establishment rather than cooking Christmas dinner.

The tree that took out the power line that cuts through the greenbelt

Our confidence in our plan was shattered at approximately 7:03am on Boxing Day morning by a few strange sounds followed by a series of flashes and the eerie quiet of a power outage. After the sun rose we could finally see what had happened. One power poll was knocked down by a tree and appeared to be snapped. Our power pole was nearly pulled down in the process causing our lines to sag into the yard. This looked line a job for heavy machinery, but this was in an area not easily accessible to vehicles. Calls to Seattle City Light were not going well either as they seemed to have no record of our outage, despite our neighbors and our repeated reporting. We might be looking at multiple days without heat, hot water, and lighting during the shortest days of the year.

Not a bad change of scenery, all things considered

This wasn’t the type of adventure we wanted for our week off so we quickly pivoted to going on vacation. We found a nice looking place on Whidbey Island, packed clean clothes and new board games, tossed what food we could in the cooler, and set off, ironically as the first set of utility trucks arrived on scene. A few hours later, we were enjoying hot showers and functional heating. Our wonderful neighbors kept us updated with the goings-on as the crews got to work. A tense afternoon turned into an evening, but by 8:30pm Seattle City Light crews fashioned a temporary solution by zip tying our power lines to a tree to restore service. It looks weird, but it works!

Exploring the shore of Deception pass.

The inside of the famous bridge.

Our agenda item for the following morning was to finally make it to Washington State’s most visited state park Deception Pass. Named so because George Vancouver’s exploratory party did not think the passage connected all the way through from Skagit Bay to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, this park separates Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands. The hike we chose was the beach front route up to the bridge. We made it as far as Gun Point before deciding we were hungry and climbing up to the bridge would delay lunch too long.

We lunched at Noe Jose Family Restaurant in downtown Oak Harbor then it was back to our planned activities of PJ’s and reading, except with Foosball!

On Wednesday, we hung a left out of our rental instead of a right to see what was around Coupeville. Our trail for the day was the bluff trail at Ebey’s landing and at 3.5 miles, the longest loop we have done in a while. Our reward was a few cocktails at lunch.

A smoked old-fashioned. This has become a bit of a mainstay in the Parikh household.

That evening the sky had cleared enough to try to get the sunset followed by a round of Herstory.

Thursday was reserved for sleeping in and hanging around the house. The rest was required to figure out Villainous Star Wars. We haven’t played anything from this series before and the mechanics took a bit to figure out, especially since each character has slightly different rules and strategies. Mira took one of the harder mechanics in Asajj Ventress. I took Darth Vader which turned out to be one of the easiest, though I almost lost by giving Sonali who was playing General Grievous plenty of heroes to take lightsabers from. This game looks like it should be more fun and we probably need a few playthroughs to get into it.

Our last full day was Friday and we wanted to take the lighthouse trail on the Fidalgo Island side of the pass. We were deceived by by the sun as the weather was not cooperative for this hike. The King tides had flooded the shallow areas and made them impassible to us. The seaweed smell did not help with our enthusiasm. We did take a different trail before heading for lunch followed by Forbidden Island with a few beers at the Penn Cove Tap Room.

Being silly at the impassable cove.

The following morning we bid good bye and headed back to our fully powered house to get ready for New Years Eve. Though the island did give us one last parting gift.

One last rainbow on the way out.