The Slow Road: Tallahassee, Florida

The only way I, the reluctant traveler, can get through this nearly constant motion that fate has had in store for me is by slowing down sometimes. I need to take in the places around me and appreciate the gift that it is to be moving around. Especially when all I want to do this spring is plant a garden and tinker with DIY projects at my house in Río Lagartos, Mexico,

Alas.

Until that dream becomes a reality, I find myself in Tallahassee, Florida, the state capitol of this gigantic southern eastern most reach of the United States of America. I call it gigantic because I drove up here from Miami and nothing will remind you of how huge Florida is like driving from the bottom of it to the top.

While I settled in and cooked my housewarming spell in three recipes, I took an afternoon to visit the Alfred B. Maclay State Park. I was a lucky traveler because the perfect time to visit this state park is right now when the dogwoods, azaleas, and camellias are at the height of their blooming.

I made a little video about my visit. It convinced me that people should have Tallahassee on their list of places to visit primarily just to go visit this state park. My personal best of the southern gardens award may just have found its top contender.

My photo album also reminded me that it was just a year ago that me and Osman went to visit Isla Arena, searching for the Museum of Pedro Infante. That was actually my first video that I posted on YouTube dedicated to taking the slow road and seeing what you find. Although we did not get to see the museum (you have to watch the video to see why not), it was another reminder that taking a slow road and enjoying what is right around you is the perfect antidote to living in a world full of uncertainty.

The Slow Road Yucatán: Valladolid to Isla Arena

We got married!

On December 7, 2024, we promised to be there for each other through whatever may come. A small gathering of family and friends joined us for a special ceremony on the islands off of Rio Lagartos followed by a reception at our sweet little house. We were greeted on the beach with fresh coconut water and eager raccoons hoping to get their hands on the coconut meat.

Our dear friend Erik Beckwith led us in sharing our vows and the exchange of rings. We felt then and still now that we are blessed to be surrounded by kind and thoughtful people. As many of you know, we are facing challenges in building our life together. But we felt the love and support of all those who showed up to witness our union. No matter what life may bring, we will have each other and the love we share.

Hair by David Petersen

Photos by Susy Alcala

Stopping to see the flamingoes dancing for their dinner.

after the party 〰️ there's the afterparty

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after the party 〰️ there's the afterparty 〰️

October in Miami Birthday Photo Essay

I was worried that my birthday was going to be extra lonely this year as I am still fairly new to Miami and due to work obligations was not able to visit my fiancé. But it was actually such a sweet and lovely long birthday weekend. I picked up some film to check out the quality of those cheap little film Kodak cameras on the market now so without further ado, I present a photo essay on film of my birthday weekend in Miami.

Housewarming Spell in 3 Recipes

Just chilling with a retrospective of Mexico´s outgoing president AMLO and a delicious homey dinner. 

I am keeping myself pretty busy with work which is why writing blog posts is on the back burner. If the U.S. Election Day was Christmas, I feel like I have both a job as a full-time Santa Claus assistant at the local mall and also have fifty close friends and family that I decided to make handmade gifts for this year. I am in WAY over my head, but we are just going to keep up the seasonal cheer until the day comes and then it’s over.

Meanwhile, I was reflecting on how much I have moved lately and how much I crave getting settled in and feeling at home. We can get tempted by all that capitalism to think buying things is the key to a comfy home. And granted, a nicely scented candle can warm a home nicely. And of course, you have to have the basics like a bed and some kitchen items that allow you to cook a meal. It’s those kitchen items that really do it for me. Because I have learned if I cook the three following things, then suddenly I feel completely nested and at home.

1) Roasting a whole chicken and then making broth with the leftover carcass. I don’t really have a recipe for this. I like to just use either butter or olive oil, a bit of some citrus zest and a healthy dose of salt and roast that whole chicken up. Bonus is that it is the cheapest way to purchase chicken. You can eat some of it and reuse the rest as leftovers for soup or salads. But then using the carcass and some onions and other veggies to make a broth is such a nice home-making move. I just portion out and freeze the broth. Having homemade broth in the freezer? Yes, this is my home.

2) A slow-made bolognese that can be used for sauces, but also for lasagnas! I like to use the famed Marcella Hasan´s bolognese sauce and let it slow simmer for like hours. It smells so good and it conducive to doing other house warming chores while you simmer down the many different liquids that you add to give it a complexity of flavors. I like to eat some with pasta the night I make it, reserve some to make a lasagna for later in the week and then freeze the rest for future easy meals.

3) A beef pot roast is the ultimate house warmer in my book. Do I have a particular recipe? No, I do not. This can be a basic chuck roast with some caramelized onions and carrots. Or when I am in Mexico, they have different cuts so I get the one for barbacoa and add a lot of onion and chiles. The point is to go low temperature and slow-roast that piece of meat. Beef + onion + low and slow + seasonings will fill your house with warmth (and possibly hungry people).

If you find yourself in a new place and want your kitchen to start feeling like a home, a heartily recommend this line up.

Obviously it would have been nice to have my sweetie across from me at dinner, but as many of you know, we have to live in different countries right now and it makes me so sad. Which is in part why I need my comfort meals to make my home feel homier. If you get to cook these three meals for family, the spell works even better! Happy home-making!

Breaking the Loneliness

You know those creepy/comforting feelings of being seen by the internet algorithmic forces at play? Recently, I was looking at Pinterest for Bible verses presented aesthetically (I will get into why in a little bit). I had my smattering of options from Proverbs, John, and Ephesians to flip through overlayed over pastels or beautiful nature scenes. And there, among the scriptures, was Carl Sagan talking about being made of star stuff. Touché, algorithm, very on brand for my mash-up of religiosity but not something I can send to my Aunt Freida.

If you know me well then you know that while I present as a godless heathen because of the company I keep, I was raised in the church and quote scripture with the best of them. There was a time when I considered my professional options to be: 1) get an English-major and be a writer or a teacher or 2) go to seminary and be a missionary or a church leader, probably in a wifely capacity. Fortunately sometime in my early twenties an awareness of financial security came in and I abandoned ALL this options as not able to provide any such security. Instead I found myself in a (not that much more financially secure!) track to my current profession as a political strategist for progressive causes.

And those progressive causes that I have chosen generally horrified my friends and family. Which makes sense. Reproductive rights, and now immigrants rights, are issues used to consolidate a particular brand of Christian evangelical nationalist to vote as a block. And here I was, formerly voted chaplain of my senior class at my Christian school in Pensacola, Florida, defecting to the enemy. I am sure the phrase, “the devil has her in his clutches” was said, or at least thought by at least one member of my former community.

But as I have always said, I still feel like I am just answering the call to do the Lord’s work. I often wonder if we all read the same bible (for me, preferred King James, which definitely paid off when it came to Shakespeare classes while pursuing that English degree). I am not still angry at the church and teachings of my youth like many of my fellow former evangelicals (and it is fair to be mad! Especially those who had a bullseye on them for some perceived infraction of “satanism”. Remind me to tell you the story of the time some church people decided my good girl mom needed an exorcism one day when she was a teen). I just do not see them walking or preaching the walk of Christ and being around them really would make me mad. I don’t trust myself to not become angry Christ-like, flipping tables of coins on these false prophets.

And I am finding that the kind and patient approach actually holds so much more power than our culture gives it credit for. Even when anger and arguing feel more righteous.

Which leads me to the actual story I want to tell:

We all know that Facebook is where civility goes to die. Many people have felt deeply estranged from family members over the thoughtless things they post there. The promise of connection on the internet is the false promise of the false prophets of tech. As Naomi Wolf (lol jk) KLIEN writes in her book Doppelgänger, her students “almost all feel duty bound to participate in creating their own digital doubles on social media.” And what started with the youth spread to our elders as well. And suddenly some of us (especially us white southerners who liked to think our family was not a part of the more grim manifestations of racism) could see the specter of relatives enjoying a picnic in the shadow of a lynching tree from the ways they moved their digital doubles in this space.

Few choose to actually leave social media entirely - instead deploying the meager tools given to use to protect our mental health in this toxic space. We might fight and argue, but then we just mute, we block, we cut off contact with the problematic ones even when that starts to look like 95% of the family tree. Don’t worry, we tell ourselves in liberal circles, we will always have our chosen families. But what happens when members of the chosen family go from skepticism about government surveillance to repeating the plot points of the “Q-Anon” crowd. Same recipe: we argue, we mute, we block, we move on. Our circles grow smaller as we complain about how hard friendships are to build in our modern world.

And we helplessly watch the very real epidemic of loneliness growing. We get sold more apps and products to solve that loneliness epidemic. We are told to focus on healing ourself. Be satisfied being alone and then the connections will come. Kind of sounds like, be content with poverty, your riches wait in the afterlife, one of the weirder pillars in the modern church which twists this from a way to move through this world without resentment into a directive for accepting systemic inequality. (You can find happiness outside of wealth AND we can create a world of shared prosperity. They aren’t mutually exclusive.)

Anyway, I was ruminating on Naomi Klein’s book and my own struggles with loneliness and alienation in the dark ages (2020 until roughly now) when I came across a post from an aunt I hadn’t spoken to in years. We aren’t close, but I knew that my uncle had died not long before my dad did and she didn’t seem to have a lot of family close by. As a political strategist I almost never mute my more right-wing family members. It is a professional hazard to live in a messaging bubble. So occasionally I would scroll past the memes she posted, generated by the MAGA meme-o-sphere, and roll my eyes.

But as I sat in my bedroom in Miami, a little bored and lonely after yet another move to a new place, I scrolled past a picture so strange that it stopped me. This wasn’t the first one I had seen something on her feed that was a clear AI hack job. One had appropriated Keanu Reeves as a MAGA-lover. This one was Morgan Freeman holding a shirt that said “Kamala is not black, Joe has dementia and Hunter is a crook.” The message was consistent with what the leader of the MAGAs had been pushing for the last week, but the messenger being assigned here was what got me worked up.

I decided it was time for the southern woman they raised to come out. They say about a southern woman that she can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip. “Well, Aunt Frieda,” I wrote, “posting this makes it seem like you are not doing so well yourself. I hope that is not true. Y’all raised us better than to talk like this. We can disagree without being nasty, can’t we? Also, this is obviously a computer-made image because this actor is known for not being mean-spirited like this picture suggest. Maybe you were hacked?”

What have I started, I asked myself as I pressed post and put my phone down. I got ready for bed hoping I do not wake up to a Mississippian pile-on from family members I haven’t talked to in years.

In the morning, I had a notification that she had liked the message and sent me a meme on messenger about wanting to see God in the White House. I took a deep breath and wrote, “Hi Aunt Frieda! This is a much better thing to post online than that other mean message.” She liked it and then said, “Hi honey! Love you!”

This is not what I was expecting. “Love you too, Aunt Freida! Hope you are doing well!” She responded with three different memes about the Lord’s blessings, the power of prayer, and the dignity and strength of southern women.

This was about a week and a half ago now and every morning since then she and I exchange pleasant memes with one another and a wish that the other has a good day. Once we talked about how much we miss my dad and her late husband. She stills posts some political memes on her page, but none of them racist or unkind.

She was definitely lonely. She is happy to be connected to a family member even though I am unlikely candidate for it has been probably 25 years since we have seen each other. And, honestly, I am happy about this unexpected turn of events too. It feels really nice to wake up to a picture of Dolly Parton and a message about strong women or even one about watching out for the devil’s influence out there in the world. We may disagree about how the devil is showing up in the modern world, but we both miss living in a world where people saw each other more often. A world where people showed up with food when a member of the family died. A world where we didn’t walk around feeling like we are disposable, not just in the systems that govern our lives, but also in the eyes of our kids, our siblings, our friends, and our elders.

So, I will keep collecting memes that give encouragement to one of my elders. I won’t be changing her vote or her political affiliation. But I hope it softens the edge of feeling abandoned. Because it is that abandonment that gives the devil that I see most active in our world, the ones promoting fascist world views, profit over people, and making us believe there is nothing we can do to stop it, an opportunity to recruit with promises of acceptance.

I appreciate Naomi Klein not just using her skills to outline this mirror world we are living and helping give me some context to think about these things, but also infusing it with the vulnerability so many of us feel. Highly recommend her book to all those who feel we are losing our grip on reality, but are bravely deciding not to isolate into a false bubble of safety. Bravely believing that it is not too late for us.

What is the Vibe: In This Together or Every Man for Himself

Poisonous Cow Parsley which looks a lot like an edible plant!

Welcome to America (or back to in my case). Hate to break it to you if you’ve been wearing the rose-colored glasses, but the vibes are a little off here these days. The past few weeks since I moved to Miami and started working with a team committed to building a welcoming Florida for all people, let’s just say it has been eventful. I don’t think I need to elaborate.

One of the things that I have been thinking a lot about these past few years is why we are scapegoating immigrants right now. Or rather, why are people so susceptible to the demonization of vulnerable “others”? The impacts of global instability have increased migration rates, sure. But that doesn’t explain why your everyday person, who sees themselves as a good person, is so receptive to such a hateful message. It is true that the fear of the foreigner is as old as anti-semitism and misogyny, two other powerful tools of those who weaponize our baser impulses for their own gain.

But I can’t just accept that it is human nature and move on. There are times when we rise to the occasion as a society. What conditions would create the desire to do so here.

Is the Common Good Global?

One factor is the persistence of Eurocentric worldviews that understand foreign policy through the lens of security for the US, Europe and the British commonwealth only. The current world situation demands us to consider the public good as encompassing the whole world, but the persistence of the worldviews based on old-fashioned colonial perspectives is very real. If we could expand our view, we would be compelled to look at the root causes of modern migration. Human migration is natural and practiced across cultures, but when people are leaving out of fear of violence or starvation, we aren’t looking at the healthy movements that occur at more sustainable levels. People fleeing their country for these reasons are the ones being characterized as the terrifying hordes at the southern border. They are easy to demonize because that is easier than looking at who is responsible for creating these conditions in the first place.

What is demanded of us in this moment (not just in immigration, but in climate crisis reversal and global peacekeeping as well) is that we see a common good that encompasses the whole world, but even in the Western states the idea of the common or public good has fallen out of fashion. We don’t even think of a common interest for those of us within these borders. Especially when it is asked of us to share with those we consider “the foreigner.” We are demonstrating in our western democracies, especially when we walk so close to the brink of electing authoritarians, that we would rather abandon the concept of the public good than reimagine it with inclusion. That is what is majorly throwing off the vibes here, y’all.

And it doesn’t have to be this way. But to break the hold that xenophobia has on the Western world it seems like we need to tackle this very depressing vibe that we would rather throw away the baby than share it. (Solomon reference for my Bible-reading people!)

What role do nonprofits in the U.S. play in all this?

I read an article called “The Origins of the Nonprofit Industrial Complex” by Claire Dunning where she very concisely situates the history of the modern nonprofit in the privatization of the delivery of goods and service. She confronts the common assumption that we have always had charitable organizations serving as the “third sector” to the government and the market.

Not only is the role of the nonprofit mythologized, it is done so as “an important political function - it is used to perpetuate a particular vision of what the role of the state is and what it should be.”

She traces the roots of the current grant-making system to the postwar cities of the US where segregation persisted, but calls for justice rang out. Some of these strategies allowed the federal government to circumvent states with racist policies.

But the privatized service-delivery through grant-making consolidated power while obfuscating who holds the power to provide or deny services. “(T)his sort of privatized inclusion became a way for marginalized communities to simply lose by a smaller margin. The consequences of this approach, which has become a pillar of the neoliberal agenda, remain with us today in the form of reduced government capacity, rampant inequality, and an unwavering expectation that small, private organizations can and should solve large, public problems.”

Not only was the system upholding the power of the federal government and wealthy donors, it also recast these services as “optional luxuries rather than essential functions of government.” Just as they expand services to include black and brown people, we recast these services as “entitlements.” And, of course, this patchwork comes nowhere close to meeting the need leading to the workers in the nonprofit industry feeling constantly underwater.

So now we must rely upon the altruistic wealthy to fill the gaps in this patchwork. Rarely is there the funding or energy to take on system changes. And maybe we are not in a position to do that system change work anyway. Unless enough of us believe in a common good or a public good that is worth upholding and defending, Dunning’s proposal for dismantling the nonprofit industrial complex will fail.

She writes, “(w)hat is needed is a wider reimagining of what public goods are and who should provide them, and a wider reckoning with what it has meant to routinely subject the needs of those traditionally excluded and harmed- particularly on the basis of race- to a system shown to be partial, privatized, and inadequate.”

If myths helped get us here, what does re-mythologizing toward a public good look like?

And I am not (nor do I think Dunning is) arguing that nonprofits are bad, let’s end them. But nonprofit leaders will be the first to tell you that we always feel like we are plugging our fingers into the cracks of a breaking dam, and getting mired in the guilt that it will never be enough. It cannot be enough structurally because even governments built by and for the people will struggle with the grand scope of serving the needs of people feeling the impact of stark wealth inequality while forestalling corruption within and criticism from without. All of these forces will be at play in the provision of these services.

Obviously, the privitization of service-delivery is in the context of a broader push that is often referred to as neo-liberalism. I just bring it up because it is one that we are not as used to thinking about in these terms. It’s one way that this every man for himself worldview seeps into all spaces, even the altruistic ones.

What can we do?

Sorry, I don’t have that many answers yet. Just questions. For example, how did the project of privitization seep so deeply into the consciousness of people in liberal societies? What connections can we learn here from the centuries-long project to build an ideology of anti-black racism that seeped into widespread belief systems. I bring this up because I learned from David Graeber in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years that before the ignition of the trans-atlantic slave trade, Christian Europe of the so-called “Dark Ages” had essentially ended the practice of slavery (and resisted debt with interest and Roman militarism). They had to change cultural worldviews by inventing and spreading modern racism to bring it back and it worked. We are still working on undoing that harm. But I bring it up because it is doable for both evil and for good. This is just a European example and I’m sure there are others.

I will keep pondering this. But help me out here. If you also think about these things, which I guess you probably do if you read this far, I would love your thoughts.

Xoxo

Tiffany

P.S. This video was very cute and basically makes the same point but in a more fun and consice way.

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Wonderings: Welcome to Miami, nesting, and my reading list

A view of Biscayne Boulevard from my bedroom

I have seen a lot of people dressed in swimwear and athleisure walking down the sidewalk in my neighbor and, no, I do not live in South Beach. Will Smith sang correctly, “party in the city where the heat is on.” It is truly a fun vibe here. I have even seen plenty of people roller blading down the sidewalk which is definitely a part of my imaginary Miami populated with Kens whose profession is Beach. But it is part of the real Miami too!

Can’t wait to go to the beach, eat a Cuban sandwich, eat Haitian food, and maybe try my hat at roller blading down the sidewalk in a swimsuit. Even though I grew up in North Florida, the climate and culture feel so much more familiar to my life in Mexico. In fact, there is a tree I keep running into that I only know the Yucatan Spanish name for. Anyone know what they call “Ciracote” in English?

You can just call me Hilaria

But this last weekend was dedicated to settling into my new place so it is a cozy place to nest when I finish work for the day.

Some highlights of my nesting:

1. I bought the literal perfect dishes to buy if you are moving to a new place alone and do not want to buy a full set of dishes. (And I am not an idiot, so I definitely get a kickback from this Amazon link if you purchase your own set.) It is the Canyon Crow Coupe dinner plate which is also kind of a bowl and definitely also a serving trey and fruit bowl. It is EVERYTHING in ONE THING.

Canyon Crow Coupe dinner plate holding my first home cooked dinner in my new spot in Miami.

2. I spent a LOT of time thinking about what the furniture in a small room set up should be. I was moved to get a desk that is actually also a vanity table after one of my new roommates spent a lot of time talking about how the old roommate used to hog the bathroom. Some might call this buying furniture, but I call this roommate diplomacy. Worth every penny. Got it at Wayfair. (no affiliate link this time. Took too long to set up.)

When the top is down, it is perfectly sized for a desk. I am using it to write this, in fact.

3. I definitely put some thought into the curation of my Miami reading list. The first book is called Migrant Aesthetics: Contemporary Fiction, Global Migration, and the Limits of Empathy by Glenda R. Carpio. This is some academic reading, y’all. But even if you are not into that, you should check out the list of books she includes in her analysis. So far, every single novel that I read because she analyzes it has blown my mind. I am now on the Valerie Luiselli novel, Lost Children Archive which is covered in chapter 3. I am reading the fiction works that Carpio digs into before reading the chapter on that particular “migrant aesthetic.” I have graciously given myself a long time to finish this project. I am also soothing my culture shock at being back to the ol’ USA by reading Slavoj Zizek’s Freedom: A Disease Without Cure. And some have been pretty scandalized by that title, I might add, but classic Zizek. Elizabeth Torres´s Lotería is something I am tasting little by little and it is both heartbreaking and illuminating. Finally, fellow Florida woman Zora Neale Hurston once up and went to Honduras to hunt for a Mayan pyramid. Did you know that? There are a lot of things that I am learning about her life from reading Sharony Green’s The Chase and the Ruin.

And since I am writing this, I am sure you figured out that we survived the hurricane and I made it to Miami. It was a very windy morning last Friday and we were VERY happy that we spent time nailing everything down and boarding the window up. But our place in Valladolid in the candlelight is VERY pretty.

Hurricane day by candlelight was pretty dreamy since no damage occurred to our house

I’ll be writing about starting my new job soon. I have so many thoughts and feelings about it. Mostly excitement. More to share soon. xoxo

A Fourth of July twist!

When I received notice late last night that my flight from Tulum to Miami was canceled, I immediately texted my sisters to express my outrage. Hurricane Beryl isn’t supposed to make landfall until early Friday morning! What were they thinking cancelling flights on Thursday afternoon? Surely it would still be sunny then (it is, but I will admit the wind is picking up a lot). My sister Holly laughed at my shock and brought up this infamous scene from The Devil Wears Prada. Touché, Holly.

While a part of me is upset that my plan for settling into my apartment in Miami and getting ready to start work on Monday is getting thrown into the spin cycle, I am also grateful to be able to help prepare our home. The house on the north coast should be fine. The mangroves really do help and it won’t get a direct hit. Although since it is being cast locally as a war between the gods (at least the memes are), you never know what could happen.

And if you have been reading my past few updates, then you know that we have not yet had all the windows installed at our house yet (for strategic reasons). We knew we would need to address that at some point, but it turns out that day was today.

It is definitely much darker in the house now. My mom and I were reminiscing about that experience. Our family lived on the Gulf Coast and experienced many hurricanes. The moment when the shutters went up and the house got so dark was kind of like the real beginning of the storm. Like we were all safe and protected now. Just had to wait for it all to start blowing over us. It’s also a good reminder to gather all the candles! Charge all the phones! Buy ice! Extra water! Clean up all the debris from the yard! All the last minute things.

Even the power company was out trimming trees back from the pówer lines before the wind picks up. Nice work, CFE!

Some people really hate this part where you are done preparing for the storm and now you just wait for the hurricane to do its thing. And it takes a much longer time to happen than most humans are ready for after hearing about a violent storm approaching for days. A lot of people are like, get it over with already!

It is kind of how I felt about my flight getting canceled. Hopefully, I fly out this weekend when the storm passes, but I spent the last few days preparing to leave today. My bags are packed. My goodbyes are said. I ate Yucatecan meals that I knew I would miss eating.

And now, I just wait. And feel grateful that I get to spend more time with my man and the dogs.

And maybe I’ll do what many southerners waiting for a hurricane to arrive do: make a gumbo.

See y’all on the other side of the storm wall.

Seattle to Winthrop Part 2

Consider what kind of entrance you want to make in the town of Winthrop, Washington.

While the building code guarantees that all the structures are within the theme of Wild West-theme town, unfortunately you are not likely to see any cowboy cosplayers. But if you happen to wear bright red lipstick with Thelma and Louise vibes, your vintage cowboy boots, and blast one of the many remixes of “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “Old Town Road” with the windows down as you turn onto the main street, I promise it will be a good time.

My travel companions had to do a little work when we arrived and set up shop at one of the cafes in town. The river was calling to me so I walked across this footbridge on my way to find the Homestream Park.

While I walked, I took this artsy shot of the walking bridge in Winthrop:

The riverside park has a family-friendly interpretation center with a little observation area to spot local osprey families. Did not spot any, but I was impressed by the set up.

On my way back to the Main Street, I caught the tail end of a parade of cars celebrating the 2024 senior graduating class. I joined the neighbors on the roadside to cheer on the next generation. I commented on how big the parade was. A blonde woman defensively replied, “Well, Winthrop is a big town.” She thinks I am a city person, I tell myself. She thinks I am looking down on them and shocked by their significance. Not prepared to engage in urban/rural diplomacy just then, I smiled back and said, “That’s what it looks like!”

I considered stopping in at the library on my way back, but instead I just looked at the de-iced ice rink for a long time and pictured how charming it must be in the winter time.

We stayed at the Abbeycreek Inn which is convenient located next to the big grocery store. The best part of the accommodation is not the room (fine, but basic) nor the pool (a little TOO family-friendly), but the area by the river where you could fish and relax. Or, as two Canadian bikers did, pitch a tent for the night.

I really love the Methow Valley and it is a perfect place to go and just play around. I know some love it for the winter sports, but I know nothing of that. Although perhaps I am about to add skating in the Winthrop Ice Rink to my bucket list. Speaking of buckets, let me end the recounting of my little adventure on this provocatively labeled bucket:

Me and my river-sitting buddy Leroy hope you get to drink in late summer nights in good company. Take good care!