Washington State

The evergreen state lived up to its name with farmlands, trees, politics, and the sometimes aegon color of the Pacific Ocean.  

As residents of Bellingham, Mount Baker a dormant volcano became our playscape and I found my field of Joy on Whidbey Island, our place of work and respite.  

The state parks and national parks are welcoming and affordable for camping even if families swarmed them like ants in the summer; we enjoyed many of them spring and fall.  

We built friendships and a local life which was hard to leave but we took what we love with us and left the disappointments behind.

Bellingham, WA

Bellingham Washington has around 3,000 more females than males....well now it's 3002! 

More importantly, Bellingham the county seat of Whatcom County has more drive thru coffee stands per capita than any other county in the country. It is also a political dichotomy; besides the longest running weekly peace vigil in the world, it also was the only county in Washington state to hold a rally for Trump's presidential campaign.  

For us Bellingham quickly became home.  We started our volunteer gig at our new address, got jobs, changed our residency to Washington state, applied for health insurance, and began exploring the area.  We enjoyed the trails on Mt. Baker, enjoyed the state parks for camping, and the rural roads for exploring!  With new income and no rent, we bought a second car and eventually a Honda Silverwing.  We got caught up on RV maintenance with the help of our friend and personal RV tech, Jim.  This included him building a customized motorcycle carrier for the back of our RV.  

We watched the seasons change and grew our friendships with the locals. We became ingrained in the community and thought a lot about making Bellingham our permanent home.  But we weren't quite ready to stop so we figured out a way for Kathy to keep her full-time contract job and headed south after surviving one of Bellingham's worse winters on record.