It's a strange peculiarity of east-coasters to refer to 'summer' as a verb, whether it is to "summer in Martha's Vineyard" or "going to summer upstate." Being the impoverished graduate students that we are, my roommate and I decided to "summer at Coney Island" the last weekend before our classes were to start. This involved a ridiculously long ride on the subway, stopping every two blocks as we made our way down to the shores of the Atlantic. Apparently, two hours on the F train gets to where the N train will take you in 45 minutes, but we didn't know this. So we sat, and waited. And waited and waited, stalled somewhere in Brooklyn wondering what possessed us to wake up so gosh-darn early in the first place as we glanced around the empty subway ... read more

Did you ever watch the Wizard of Oz and in that scene where Dorothy et al are running through the endless red poppy fields trying to reach the Emerald City think "I wish I could do that!" Same here! Well we finally made it to the tulip festival (fittingly, a few hours north of Seattle, our own "Emerald City"). I've been wanting to visit the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival with Andras for years. Not only does the area transform into a photographers dream, but acres upon acres of wildly colored flower fields cannot manifest any feelings other than happiness. Last year the rare April snow delayed the bloom and our work schedules prevented us from leaving the city and this year the weather almost threatened to do the same thing, but during the last few days ... read more

There is something so inherently classy and romantic about the great wine regions of the world. The quaint reserve of Riems, the misty mornings in Napa Valley, the feed store in Prosser with the heavy-set lady pushing an equally hefty child in a stroller out front....okay that last one doesn't exactly fit the idyllic image you get when you think of wine country, but then again this area is young. Up and coming. It hasn't yet traded it's rustic, agricultural charm for formulaic tourist facade, although that transformation is on the horizon. It's that very principle that makes the Yakima Valley area both refreshing and challenging to visit. On one hand, many wine makers are still so involved in the development of their product that you can speak with them personally in a tasting room instead ... read more

This trip has been forever in the making. I'm honestly surprised to be writing of it as I thought it would never happen. We had originally planned to go last March. Yes, I realize it's almost October, but we had a week off and our brains swam with visions of rainforest camping and montane hikes. And then a huge storm blew through and flooded the campsites while mudslides completely demolished the roads. The trip was post-poned until summer. Summer came and went. The weather was good but the scheldule was not. If I wasn't working Andras was. On my days off he was at the office. Between the two of us we considered it a stroke of good fortune to have one day off together, and when it finally did come around (half-way through August) we ... read more

It's been nearly one year to the day since we arrived in the Seattle area and we still hadn't made the time to go visit the mountain. The mountain I look at nearly every day, the mountain that symbolizes the northwest, the same mountain I used to reminisce about when I was away....yes, that mountain. At 14,410ft Mount Rainier dominates the Seattle sky-scape and when the weather is clear and the haze is low it appears suddenly on the horizon, so close you feel as though you can almost touch it. Still it has eluded out grasp, just beyond our reach, and on days when the mountain is out I look longingly to the south and think of the cool crisp air mountain air that would fill my lungs. And, believe it or not, we haven't ... read more