1 month road trip to Washington

Where to even start.. 2021 has been a bit of a shit show for me to be honest. My whole world blew up in June when my almost 4 year relationship came to an end.. It wasn’t expected and to say it ended horribly is an understatement. I was a mess.. I had never had my feelings and heart messed with the way it was, and I didn’t know how I was going to get through it. I started therapy, and tried to keep myself busy.. Which helped, but wasn’t enough. Some part of me knew that I needed a break, time to find myself again. Time to get away from Los Alamos and truly heal in a space away from everything that was causing me pain. Although I couldn’t make that happen back in June because of how busy my schedule was, what I could do was make a plan for later in the year. And I did just that..

I blocked November 16th-Dec 20th off to get the heck out of NM and take time for myself. Fast forward to the beginning of November, I was so happy that “June me” knew exactly what '“November me” would need. A break after working my ass off for the past 4-5 months, and time to finally be able to process what happened to me.

November 16th started my month long adventure. My mom wanted to road trip out to Oregon, so she came along with me and we started there. NM>CO>UT>ID>OR. 2 days later after basically driving straight through we made it to Canon Beach Oregon. If you’ve never been there put it on your bucket list, its beautiful. We took this time to relax, explore and just have a simple, easy couple days taking in the beauty. I am really grateful that my mom started this trip with me, because it was a good way to ease into being away from home for an extended period of time.

After 2 days of exploring Canon Beach we headed out to Seattle to drop my mom off at the airport to head back home. Once I dropped her off I headed to Issaquah WA to stay with my Uncle for the rest of my trip. My Uncle and Aunt were so welcoming and amazing to let me stay with them for a month.

This started the “solo”-ish part of my trip. Yeah, I was staying with my Uncle, but they’re all super busy with work, and I came out here with literally NO PLAN AT ALL. I just wanted to get out of NM and take time to experience life somewhere else. I wanted to be able to wake up in the morning in WA and say “damn, its a nice day, lets go explore”. Or, “I’m not getting out of my PJ’s and I’m going to stay in bed all day”. Something about not having a schedule and plan intrigued me since that’s not at all how I can live my life when I am at home. So far I’ve slept A LOT. I’ve binge watched many shows on hulu and spent multiple days curled up on the couch watching tiktok. I’ve also gotten lots of Christmas shopping done, and spent some time with friends that I have out here. I’ve baked a ridiculous amount of Christmas cookies and spent lots of time in the hot tub.

Speaking of friends, my next adventure was with Nicole, a friend from NM that moved up here about 4 years ago. She came out to Seabrook with me for 3 days and we explored Olympic National Park. My Uncle has a beach house in Seabrook and offered for me to spend as much time there as I wanted to on this trip, so obviously I took him up on that offer. We left Issaquah on our 3 hour drive to the coast. We went to Ocean Shoes and had lunch, drove around on the beach (my personal favorite thing we did). Searched for sand dollars and went to a couple shops. After that we continued our journey up the coast, stopping anywhere we wanted and eventually finding another location to drive on the beach.. I just had to.. so we drove along the beach till we couldn’t anymore. It ended in a beautiful location where we stopped and took some photos of each other.. This is why I LOVE having someone else with me in cool places, I don’t have to set up my tri-pod and do the awkward self portraits.

Nicole and I went to Seabrook saying the only things we wanted to see were the Hoh rainforest, Ruby beach and the Tree of life. Luckily we had the best weather on our second day there and were able to see all of them, plus lots of other beautiful spots. Hoh rainforest was mostly closed due to flooding the few days before we got there, but what we did get to see was unreal. The height of the trees, how green and lush it was.. It was beautiful. I found myself snapping a million photos and I had to stop so I could really take it in for myself.. Take a step back and enjoy it in the moment. I often find myself doing that when I am in gorgeous locations.. I look at it all through my camera and I take way more photos than I need to. I’ve been trying to make a point to take the photos I want, and then put my camera away and really experience the location I am at.

We ended our second evening there driving on the beach again and eating pizza in the car while it rained. We then went back to the beach house, opened some wine and sat in front of the fire and just relaxed. We slept till 10am the next day and slowly got ourselves back to Seattle. It was the perfect 2 days of exploring the coast.

Another thing I knew I wanted to do on this trip was see Mt. Rainier. I am a National Parks freak and have a scratch off map of all the parks, and I wanted to be ablet o scratch a new one off of my list. I woke up one morning and decided that was the day to go explore the park, so I did just that. It ended up being the perfect day to see the park, the sun was out for a little bit, and there was only a small number of clouds cover the mountain, so I could see about half of it. A good thing to know if visiting the park between November and April is that they require snow chains to even enter the park. Luckily there are a few places before the park that rent them out for the day. There were so many amazing waterfalls that had the prettiest blue color to the water. This is a location I have to come back to during the summer when I can see the whole park.

After this I had no plan, until I reached out to an Airbnb owner in North Cascades NP to see if she needed professional photos done of her rental. I offered professional images of the rental in exchange for a nights stay, and she was all for it. Let me tell you, this rental is an all time favorite of mine. The owner is so sweet, the location is perfect, its beautiful and they have the friendliest pups that roam the neighborhood that became my instant best friends. If you’re planning a trip to North Cascades, let me know and I will give you her information.

I showed up, took photos of the airbnb and then headed into the park to explore. I have wanted to see Diablo lake since I first saw a photo of it. The amazing blue color of the water and the insane views, I could not wait.. Well, its December, so I really should have thought about that and set my expectations accordingly. It was DUMPING snow the entire time I was at the park.. Like probably 4 inches in the 2 hours I was exploring. This made it really cold and almost impossible to see anything, including Diablo lake, although I did still try. North Cascades is another national park that I plan to visit again during the summer. I’d love to do it when the whole park is open and the weather is much nicer.

After North Cascades I spent a day in Bellingham visiting some family and meeting a new photographer friend. I don’t have many photos of my time there, but it is such a cute town and I would highly recommend putting it on your list of places to visit. I met up with a friend named Deborah, and although we felt like we already knew each other, we had never met in person before. I am part of a very small very close photography group online that is basically one big supportive family. Deborah is part of that family, so when she saw I was going to be in the area she reached out to meet up. I am so glad she did. We took a handful of photos of each other and then headed to a hole in the wall Chinese restaurant for lunch. It was great getting to chat about photography and met another creative soul.

Since then I’ve been back at my uncles baking more Christmas cookies and getting my things organized to head back home. I am so glad I was able to take this time away and explore Washington. Its been good for my soul to see what else is out there and to know Los Alamos isn’t all there is. Who knows, maybe one day I will end up in Washington.. I sure wouldn’t be mad if I did.

If there’s one thing I could say it would be.. Take the trip. Do the things. Get out of your comfort zone and explore.

I wanted more clarity than I got from this trip, but that is okay. It was an unrealistic expectation for me to think this trip would fix everything. Having so much time to myself really set myself up to think about my past a lot and everything that I was put through. Its almost made the hurt and feelings fully come back, but I realize that is only because I am giving it so much of my time and thought. Its been good for me to think about what happened and to really process it all and my feelings. I feel hurt and betrayed and sad, and all of that is okay. There is no timeline for healing and moving on. All I know is I am free and able to do and be whatever I want. There’s no limit to what I can do and where I can go now, and that feels amazing! I’m finally happy and ready for whatever happens next.

I finally have my smile back!