Olympia!

Maggie and I hit town Wednesday night and have busily started to establish residence here. We now have a local cell phone (my first ever), a PO box, a storage locker and a pretty good idea of housing availability. We've seen a some good places to live and some not so good. In the meantime we're staying with a friend who lives in the city's senior housing project downtown. We're easily the youngest people here. In two days Maggie has discovered many design and maintenance deficiencies here. Looks like the contractor who built this place did it on the cheap and the city did not insist on full ADA compliance.

The town is gloriously pretty--lots of green and water. The state capitol dome is visible from many parts of town. Downtown Olympia is vibrant, with lots of shops, a farmers market. The suburbs are pretty typical but I won't be spending much time there. Best of all, this place is filled with progressive thinkers. I've seen more anti-war, social justice and impeach bush bumper stickers and signs in the past few days than I would see during a week in Phoenix. I'm going to like it here.

The move hasn't left much time for blogging (either writing or reading) so I feel out of touch with events. I see the Iraq war has dropped off the top of the news in favor of the coming war with Iran (so as to avoid World War III) but my guess is that people are still dying by the score under the occupation.

I hope to be back up once I get settled here.

On the Road

Greetings from Logan, Utah. Maggie and I made it here in a marathon 16 hour drive from the Large Amorphous Central Arizona Urban Area. I saw it last in my rear view mirror in the pre-dawn hours of Friday morning. We are almost halfway to Olympia and the rest of the trip will be pretty easy. I am in no small way excited beyond description to be moving at last.

The drive up to Logan was long but spectacular. Southern Utah is gorgeous with fall color this time of year. So is Logan. We spent this afternoon hiking with friends in the National Forest east of town. A lot of the trees are bare at higher elevations but farther down we found a lot of color. The late afternoon sun made the turning leaves positively glow.

We roll again tomorrow.