This past weekend was a huge milestone for us as a family. We went on a “road trip” for a “vacation”! Alright, I know it sounds wonderful but there is a reason I put road trip and vacation in quotes 🙂 . It was less of a vacation and more of a test of how our son would react to a new environment. We chose a destination that was about an hour and half from our home – a small Island in the Puget sound called Camano Island. Having said that, it was still a great break to get away from the daily rut. Our son was largely okay during the drive. Although, my wife had to sit with him in the back seat. He usually tends to get bored after some time and then gets cranky. If my wife keeps shuffling through the toys, he is fine. The airbnb we booked had really nice views of Puget Sound making it easy to get the island vacation feel 🙂 . On the first night, we had issues with the heat. I followed the instructions laid down by the host but the fireplae did not turn on. It seemed like the pilot light was out and I wasn’t able to get it to work. There was another heater (radiator type) that made some crackling sounds when I turned it on. Not liking that, I turned it off. We had plans of having our son sleep with us in the same room given the new place and all but given the issues with the heater, we decided he would sleep in a different room where there was an electrical heater. We tried to keep the room settings as close to home as we could (we even took the white noise machine from home). However, the room wasn’t dark enough and our son woke up at 4:15 the first morning so we had to tend to him then.
On saturday, we decdied to explore the place a bit and went to the beach close to our airbnb followed by the Cama beach state park. With the nice warm weather, stunning viewes all around, the place is awesome. Pictures don’t do the place justice but here are a couple of shots from our day out:
It wasn’t really a “day” out because we headed out of the airbnb after our son’s first nap so around 3pm and came back home at around 7pm. But as they say, its not the amount of time you spend enjoying but the quality of time that matters. So it was a throroughly enjoyable day with the family and nice to get away from the daily rut. The next day, we decided to head back early so left the place around 11:15 and were back home by 1:00 to get ready for the grind. The trip was a good test and now we know what all we should have packed and what all we packed that was unnecessary. A learning for the next trip!
Btw, another bonus activity I was able to do, was get a nice picture of the night sky. Friday night was forecasted to be clear (although it got cloudy after 1:30 am) so I decided to take some star trail pictures with the puget sound as the foreground. I did not carry my telescope or the star tracker and it was too bright (with the moon and city lights) for milky way shots so the choice was simple. Here is a processed image of the night sky I captured. The orange/yellow glow on the left is the cloud cover that was approaching and the bluish purple tint, I am assuming, is auroral activity?
All in all, it was a nice family “road trip” and a “vacation”. Looking forward to a real vacation sometime soon!
astropilotdad.com 