Not everyone is up for a staycation right now. But for me, getting away even for a day, or two, or three, is a great boost to mental health during pandemic paralysis. Since it looks like it might be awhile until we can fly off to the Alps, or the Cote d’Azure or the Azores…a little sanity staycation is a perfect pandemic prescription.
Our Cottage at Quintessa
We’ve decided to do several sanity staycations in the weeks and months ahead, visiting places within a few hours or a few days from home. Places reachable by car with low impact as far as crowds or contact with humans. Our first sanity staycation was to the beautiful Whidbey Island less than two hours from my home in Washington State where we have been on travel pause for two months.
Whidbey Island
The Quintessa
First, traveling mid-week is a great way to avoid crowds. On Whidbey we felt like we were the only visitors, and that was okay with us. We rented a cottage on the grounds of the Quintessa, a wedding and events location. But on a Tuesday, we were the only guests and it felt really special to have it all to ourselves.
Langley Washington
Whidbey is easy to get around by car. We’ve been here before so didn’t need to see everything, but if you haven’t visited before the cute shops especially in Langley and Coupeville are my favorites. If you are game there are also wine tasting rooms, distilleries and taprooms. Greenbank Farms will serve you wine and cheese and send you off with a delicious berry pie to take home – giving you a chance to savor your sanity staycation for a day or two more. Or pick up some world famous Penn Cove Oysters while here…the tiny sweet delicious mollusks are the best.
Joe’s Wood Fired Pizza
If you are an experienced cyclists it’s a great place to ride, but we left our bikes at home this time and opted for some easy hiking. We chose to do a really fun day hike in the Fort Ebey State Park, perfect for any fitness level and offering some really beautiful views. Exactly what my mental health was craving.
Fort Ebey State Parl
Although we didn’t have a reservation (highly recommended) we were able to slide in for an early dinner at the highly rated Prima Bistro in Langley. Both indoor and outdoor dining and a really great menu makes the Prima Bistro a top choice. If you want to social distance try to get a reservation off peak, although the restaurant was following all State of Washington distancing rules. On our second night we got take-out at the highly rated Joe’s Wood Fired Pizza. Excellent New York style pizza, in the Bayview area halfway between Langley and Freeland. We also made a quick stop for a treat at Coupeville’s Red Hen Bakery – killer cinnamon rolls, take out only.
The historic building in Langley,home to Prima Bistro
Plan Ahead
A sanity staycation takes a bit of planning…don’t assume everything is open and running regular hours. For instance Joe’s is only open for take-out currently (July 2020).
Also very important is that you check the current schedule for the Washington State Ferries (unless you plan to arrive from the North over the Deception Pass Bridge). Currently due to reduced staffing Washington State Ferries are running at half capacity (July 2020). The Mukilteo to Clinton Ferry (closest from Seattle and King and Snohomish County and all points east) is usually a 2-3 boat wait unless you can travel during non-peak. Another option is the Port Townsend to Coupeville Ferry. If you are coming from points west and south ( Pierce, Kitsap, Thurston, Mason or Jefferson Counties) this is definitely the way to go. The great thing about this boat is you can make a reservation and be secured a spot on whatever sailing you want.
Ebey Landing
But that’s all part of the “fun” (she says tongue in cheek) during the time of Covid. Learning to live with new rules and guidelines will serve us all in the long run…and taking a mental health sanity staycation is a highly recommended way to feel better and wash away the blues – but only if you are comfortable being out. We plan to choose safe, quiet and unpopulated places to visit on upcoming sanity staycations.
Not a soul around. Enjoying a cinnamon roll outside Red Hen Bakery
Be safe. Be smart. And above all else, please be kind.
I tried to read this book several years ago (published 2009) but couldn’t get focused on it. That was back when I was still a frantic working mom. Oh times have changed.
I am much calmer and have a lot more free time, and on my second try I became engrossed in the Wolf Hall story. This novel has been showered with awards, and is fascinating in its complexity and historical detail.
The book covers the early 1500’s in England, during the reign of King Henry the VIII and follows Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power within King Henry’s court.
This is the first of a trilogy about Cromwell’s life, a man who was close to every major historical event in England during this period. He influenced Kings and Lords, had his hand in the Catholic Church and eventually the Church of England.
Though filled with historical facts and people, the book is a re-imagined story built from historical records. My love of Ken Follett’s work of this same era is because of Follett’s ability to bring the reader so intimately into the lives of the lowly working class people of the time. Mantel does the same, but shows us the inner workings and confidences of the ruling class and aristocracy. From the King on down through the court Mantel careful makes these historical figures familiar to us.
I’m looking forward now to tackling the next two books very soon. I loved Mantel’s writing, her beautiful descriptive prose precisely put the reader in the moment. Her talent for words in itself is beguiling. She is a faithful, veracious author.
The link below is an affiliate link, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a comission if you click through and make a purchase. Thank you.
Funny title you say, how REI travels with us around the world? But it’s true. Oh so true. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and the Recreational Equipment Inc Co-op (REI) was just a tiny store back then in the ’60’s, but it was still a big part of my childhood. In those days REI was primarily focused on mountain climbing and backpacking. Jim Whitaker, the first American to summit Mount Everest and a Seattle native, was the first full-time employee of REI in 1955.
In the 1980’s REI expanded it’s offerings but remained true to it’s co-op roots. From then until now, REI continues to offer high quality gear for backpacking, camping, kayaking, cycling and travel.
All our bags last fall on departure day
I’ve been a member of REI since the 1990’s, and through membership you earn points for discounts on every purchase you make. And, because we travel so much and love the products, we make a lot of purchases at REI. In fact our family has learned to buy REI gift certificates for us when gift giving is in order.
We have been using our down time during quarantine to inventory our travel gear and prepare so that as soon as we can, we can hit the road again. It’s still gonna be a while, probably after the new year, but we will travel again, and our REI gear will be with us.
It takes a little effort to prepare for departure day
Even if you don’t travel as extensively as we do, REI has a wonderful selection of travel items for casual travelers, walkers, hikers and more. Because we are such big fans, tooday we share with you some of our most favorite items from REI that we don’t leave home without. We hope this is helpful to you.
The links below are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Thank you.
Travel Bags
Our REI bags ready for boarding in Berlin
We LOVE our REI roller bags and we can verify they are tough! Our bags are four years old and have been around the world twice! That’s 121 flights, 153,000 miles and 68 countries! With all the wear and tear the only thing we have had happen was one wheel got caught in a baggage carousel and we had to replace it…but the replacement was available on line and easy to install. We continually pack these bags to 50lbs each and will continue to do so. A great purchase for us.
Arne and his REI backpacking on the Portuguese Camino
We each have a backpack, mine an Osprey brand and my husband’s an REI brand. These have also been traveling with us as our carryon for four years. Additionally the backpacks made the 500 mile trek with us on the Camino de Santiago Frances, as well as on many other hikes. Both of these brands available at REI are durable and sturdy as well a comfortable. We beat them up, and the take a licken and keep on trekking.
When I first heard about something called packing cubes I thought it was just another gimmick to get me to spend money…boy was I wrong. I can’t imagine being on the road as much as we are now without packing cubes. Because we carry so much more than just clothes, our packing cubes provide us with a way to organize medicines, electronics and cords, office supplies and even things like salt and pepper and olive oil – and of course our clothes too. We have several different kinds of packing cubes but our Eagle Creek REI Cubes are our favorite and the most durable. The zipper (which has blown out on our other brands) is so strong and the fabric is perfect. I plan to pick up a few more of these before we hit the road again.
Yes we do carry a hammock with us around the world…why? Because we can, with this lightweight and compact hammock by ENO from REI. We use the hammock on the beach, or on our Airbnb patio and sometimes even on a hotel deck. The straps we also purchased from REI.
You might be surprised that I carry a French Press with me when I travel, but it is actually one of the things in my suitcase I use the most – in fact every day. And it’s so easy to be able to have my favorite French-press coffee each morning because of this amazing titanium light weight French press from REI. One of my all time favorite purchases from REI. It’s made for backpacking, but just as useful for a long trip or weekend getaway.
Me with my trusty REI trekking poles, Finisterra Spain, the end of the Camino
If you consider price and quality, buying a product that is well made will always give you more bang for the buck. Case in point, our trekking poles by Black Diamond. We have been using these same trekking poles for nearly 12 years. They took me over Mount Warminanusqa on the Inca Trail and all 640 miles on both the Camino Frances and the Camino Portuguese and hundreds of other hikes equaling thousands of miles. Trekking poles keep my posture upright, keep my hands from swelling and provide stability as I hike around the world. These collapsible poles easily fit in our suitcase.
My husband really likes the Cool Max REI hiking socks while my favorite are the lower cut Smartwool women’s style that keeps the merino wool off my ankle because I sometimes have a skin reaction with wool.
Head to toe in mud and REI gear after seeing the mountain gorillas in Uganda
We have purchased many of our favorite pieces of clothing for both hiking and everyday travel at REI. My husband is a big fan of PrAna and owns multiple pairs of PrAna shorts and long hiking pants. I have REI hiking shorts that I LOVE and will be getting another pair soon. And we both own several REI and Columbia brand hiking shirts, both long and short sleeve.
Hats
My fav hat and REI shorts
If you follow us around the world you will notice we are rarely without a hat on our head. I carry three or four different hats in my bag while Arne usually has two kinds. He likes a wicking style baseball cap for running and daily use and likes the Outdoor Research brand. And for hiking he wears a wide brim hat by by REI. I also have a wide brim hiking hat that includes a roll down neck protector by Sunday Afternoon. I have had this hat so long I don’t even remember and it’s still in great condition.
As you can see, I am a huge fan of REI, for the products I need at a price point I can afford. Through my experience I know I can trust REI for quality and durability on the things we love for our travels. It’s also really important to me to support local businesses. Although REI is now an internationally recognized brand, I love how it’s roots are solidly in the Pacific Northwest. And so that’s how REI travels with us around the world.
With friends last summer, Mount Rainier Washington State
Our fingers are crossed that we will be back traveling internationally in early 2021. We hope to pick up our itinerary where we left off (with some adjustments for weather) and continue on our Grand Adventure. The world has changed but our desire to see it has not. Another thing that hasn’t changed, how REI travels around the world with us. We are loyal customers and look forward to updating what’s in our suitcase very soon.
Feel free to ask me any questions about products I am endorsing here. We love it when you share our blog. Be safe.
Coffee. It’s my drug of choice. If you know me you know I don’t just drink coffee, I experiment with it around the world. And through that experimentation I have learned to appreciate the cultural aspect of coffee, the history of coffee and the fierce competition of the world’s best coffee. And so my Book Review of The Devil’s Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee fell right in my coffeehouse.
This book is actually old, published in 1999 and the story beginning in 1988. At that time, author Allen embarked on a around the world trek to research and get caffeinated and answer the question: Did the advent of coffee give birth to an enlightened western civilization?
Allen traveled from Yemen and Ethiopia to Europe and India and the United States and in his journey he not only drinks a hell of a lot of coffee, he finds himself in some interesting and hair-raising situations. All for the love of coffee.
The book has some great cultural history and Allen’s witty writing helps us follow the bouncing bean. Funny and interesting, but a tiny bit dated.
****Four stars for The Devil’s Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee
I wasn’t sure I liked this book in the beginning. In fact I put it aside to read another book and eventually came back to it and started again. And I am glad I did. I really did enjoy this story.
We are introduced to Vale, a young woman living in New Orleans but raised in Vermont. Vale is estranged from her mother, but when her mom Bonnie goes missing during the 2011 Tropical Storm Irene, Vale returns to Vermont and her roots.
Returning home for the first time in eight years, Vale rediscovers the poverty stricken region of Heart Spring Mountain, home to three generations of women before her. Through her search for her mother, Vale will find lost family history and secrets, understanding of pain and love from the past, and a love of her own. Vale will see for the first time the connection her ancestors have with the mountain, how it shaped them and thus her own life and the life of her missing mother.
Beautifully written story of family ties, fractures small and deep, and healing.
****Four stars for Heart Spring Mountain by Robin MacArthur
I have loved the other three books I have read by Sue Monk Kidd, and in this new novel she strays far and in doing so creates a compelling story of Biblical times with a twist. Here is my Book Review of The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd.
Kidd herself says she is audacious to write this fictional tale, based period of Jesus in the first century. But instead of following the practiced story from the New Testament Kidd gives Jesus a wife. Ana is the key character of The Book of Longings.
Imagining a world for women during this period we follow Ana from her upbringing in a wealthy but unloving family in Galilee, to her first meeting with Jesus and through their eventual marraige, which saves her from being forced to become a concubine for Herod Antipas.
In the ensuing years of marriage Jesus and Ana each develop their own spiritual beliefs, with Jesus setting off to follow John the Immerser and eventually declaring himself the long awaited Messiah, King of the Jews. Ana and Jesus are separated for several years during his pilgrimage and she finds her own voice in her spiritual writings, even while women are not allowed to do such things or be educated.
Followers of Jesus are unaware he is married, or that Ana and Jesus lost a baby girl at birth. In Kidd’s story these unknowns about Jesus are never recorded.
Despite much trial and a long endured separation, Ana and Jesus are reunited, but of course we all know how Jesus’ life ends.
I loved how Kidd takes the biblical stories we all know, elaborates with other historical facts we may not know, and then peppers the story with fictional detail that blends seamlessly and beautifully to round out the life of all the characters; most names we will recognize.
Particularly poignant for me was the focus on the Jesus as a human being not a divinity. The overarching message is one of bold and strong women of the time-period, who persevere despite strict control by males to keep women subordinate. The triumph of this story is Ana’s will and courage, a beautiful account of a woman finding her voice during a historical period where society wants to silence her.
I loved this book.
*****Five stars for The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
Read last week’s review of The Night Watchman
My current read Wolf Hall
The links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a comission if you click through and make a purchase.
This is my system for organizing digital photos. It might not work for everyone but it works for me. I use an iPhone and a MacBook so if you are not using Apple products your system will need to be different. For those of you who are not Mac users, I have included in this blog information about Google Drive photos (see below). So at the request of some of my friends, I have put together this blog that lays out my system for organizing digital photos. I hope it can be helpful to you.
Me with my first iphone
What Kind Are You?
I read an interesting article once that placed digital photo people into three different categories; casual, moderate or enthusiastic. My photo library has 59,000 photos and nearly 400 videos. I’m pretty sure I fall into the “enthusiastic” category. Or crazy. I think my husband would label my photo taking as crazy.
I was a Mac user before I was an iPhone user and the day I realized my two devices were going to be talking to each other was the day my life changed. I mean really. It didn’t take me long to give up my SLR camera altogether and use my iPhone as my sole camera. I currently have an iPhone 11x and it takes beautiful images. Even though I have a few complaints about the iPhone 11, photos are not one of them. So I take lots of photos every day and I need a good system for organizing my digital photos.
Photo I took in 1980 on my first film SLR when I was learning photography in college. That’s my husband…before he was my husband.
Editing
Before I get into storage let me talk briefly about editing. On the iPhone you can adjust the light level before you take a photo by tapping lightly on the screen and adjusting the up and down toggle for brightness. But often I don’t have time to do that if I need to capture a fleeting moment. And so I do it in edit mode after. The iPhone editor has a wide variety of options for lightening, brightening and adding color to your images. Sometimes I will turn a color photo into a black and white photo for dramatic effect. You can warm up a photo or cool it down. It’s all very user friendly.
I added color and drama to this image taken from a moving car.
Sometimes I use the bounce or loop feature on the iPhone and I really enjoy the long exposure feature. When traveling I find I love it for any water image, storms or even traffic.
Iguazu Falls before editing
Iguazu Falls in Brazil, long exposure image
Another cool feature with the iPhone is the live camera. I keep live on all the time. If I capture an image where the subject may have moved unexpectedly or a car moved into the frame, often you can go back to the live edit and skip back a frame or two to easily make your photo perfect. Super easy without needing to be a techno whiz.
Old Route 66 gas station before editing
Using Snapseed I made this old Route 66 gas station look very vintage
The only other edit program I use is a very rudimentary app called Snapseed. In Snapseed I can add lots of dramatic color to a stormy photo. Or I can make an old vintage truck look even more old and vintage. I can make my photos look like they were taken on a Polaroid camera 40 years ago – or a number of other very simple edit options. I use Snapseed often and don’t find I need any other complicated editing software for the purposes I use my photos for.
Before editing too dark
In this image I was in the shadow with bright light behind. I used Snapseed to lighten up the forefront of the image. This image also is in portrait mode, one of the features on the iPhone 11
Types of Storage Options
Not so long ago all my photos were printed and put into photos albums. I still have all those photo albums and one long term project goal is to eventually transfer those to digital.
All my old photos albums from 1970-2006
Not so long ago I was storing photos on CDRom and thumb drive. I hated this system because I didn’t seem to be able to keep these organized or find them easily, needing to pop the CD or thumb drive in and out of the computer.
Today there are a variety of photo storage options available and everyone has their favorites. My photos are in iCloud, while other people prefer options like DropBox, Shutterfly, or Picasso. Amazon Prime has a photo storage program, but I haven’t been able to find anyone who uses it. From my experience the two most popular are Apple iCloud and Google Drive. Since I don’t use Google Drive I asked a fellow blogger, Slavka, to share a little about Google Drive:
Do you have a Gmail email address? If you do, Google offers other convenient services that you can access via your Gmail email account. Google Drive is one of them and it’s great cloud storage for your photos and other files.
Google Drive Photo Storage is popular and reliable
So how to use it? First of all, you need to have or open a new Gmail email account. With this email account, you have 15 GB of free space. You can use this free space for any of the connected services such as Google Drive, Google Docs, or Google Sheets. You can access these by clicking on the 9 dots icon that appears in the top right corner next to your login icon. Click on the triangle icon of Google Drive. This is a space where you can store photos, videos, audio files, documents files, etc. You can group then into separate files and share them with others via a sharable link.
Google Drive storage is convenient for the temporary storage of recent photos or the ones you want to share. Older images and files should be downloaded to an external storage drive for archiving. Or, if you want to keep them available online, you might need to pay for additional cloud storage after you run out of free space. Currently, Google charges approx. $28 per year for 100GB of cloud space.
Thanks Slavka. Be sure to check out Slavka’s wonderful travel blog on the link above.
So, the iCloud photo storage works basically the same way. It’s free for the first 5G and then you pay monthly for additional storage. For a long time I paid $4 a month for 200GB but now I pay $10 a month for 500GB. My photos are automatically uploaded regularly to the cloud.
Using iCloud photo storage works for me and millions of other people.
No matter which storage system you chose, keeping your photos organized is the challenge. For me it’s a big committment given the number of photos I have and my constant need to access them. Here is how I do it.
Organizing my Images
When you open the iCloud photo library, you can go to File in the top left hand corner. Click on File and you will get an option to create an album. In my photo library I have dozens of albums. I have albums for family, friends, house and garden, genealogy, cycling, hiking and camping, and of course cats. (LOL). Then I have an album for every country we have visited. Sometimes I will combine a couple of countries to save a little space. Additionally I have separate albums where I store art work for my blog, birthday funny memes, or things I might want for holidays on social media. I have one whole albums for Seahawks and Cougar football memes.
My photo library
Creating the albums is the easy part. The hard part is continually moving your new images into the files. Here is how I do that:
Every few weeks I sit down and delete images. Ideally you should be doing this daily or minute to minute on your phone, but that doesn’t seem to happen for me. So I go through and delete duplicate images, poor quality images or other images I don’t want in one go.
Albums for all the things I love and want to keep organized
I check the date I last moved images to albums and after deleting I start with that date and begin moving the images (click and drag) into the albums. Sometimes an image might end up in multiple albums (for example family album and hiking album). This way I can find it easily for future use.
Working on deleting hundreds of images
The Big Delete
Since I’ve had A LOT of free time on my hands these past few covid months, I began a new delete project. Going to the overarching file called Photos, where all images are from all albums, I started with the oldest images and slowly am going through and deleting. I have found there are photos I don’t even remember taking or where I took them. Some photos that seemed important at the time, no longer have meaning for me (the first time I saw a wild baboon it seemed impressive…now so many thousands of baboons later who cares). And so I delete. This is very time consuming but will eventually help my overall storage issue. I am committing a few hours a week to accomplish this task by the end of the summer – it’s about ten years worth of photos, but an important goal for organizing digital photos.
So What About External Hard Drives?
For a couple of years before I went all Mac I used to have an external hard drive I would plug in to my PC and back up my photos regularly. But I haven’t done that since I went to 500 GB in the cloud, as I feel confident in the system I am using. However, I recently purchased a new external hard drive called Photo Stick that stores 128GB of data. I haven’t started using it yet, but I decided it was worth it to have it since it is very small (like a thumb drive), has a huge amount of storage, works continually and will help me clean up duplicates. It also will offer me even more peace of mind. Hopefully it actually does all those things. I paid $79 for it.
So What is Best for You?
Remember in the beginning when I asked what kind of photo person you are? Determining the answer to that question is your first step in getting your images organized and safe. As an “enthusiastic” photographer, as well as a blogger, travel writer and very active social media user, my photos are incredibly important to me in my day-to-day life. I consider myself a good photographer, after years of practice and a small amount of training, and photography is an important hobby in my life. So I spend both time and money making sure my images are protected, accessible, and good quality.
No matter what kind of photographer you are, you can start organizing your digital photos with a little knowledge and commitment. Good luck!
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