Washington

When we made the decision to move to Vermont in 1994, there were wistful parts of us sighing, “Well, I guess we’re not moving to Seattle.”

We’d visited Seattle earlier in the year. Our friends were living in a small houseboat on Lake Union. We got the bed and they set up a tent on their dock. We kayaked. We went to the fish market.

We went other places, too. We hiked in Mt. Rainier National Park and made a tiny snowman in July. We had coffee and cherry pie at the Twin Peaks diner in North Bend and saw Snoqualmie Falls. We went to Roslyn and took pictures in front of the Roslyn’s Café (Northern Exposure) wall. We hired a fishing guide and floated the Yakima River, after which—exhausted and dehydrated from travel, wind, and sun—we found a restaurant next to Dr. Joel Fleischman’s office with staff kind enough to let me order off the menu: brown rice, steamed vegetables. We went to Olympic National Park and camped in the Hoh rainforest. I got poison oak in my eye and it swelled shut and I had to go to the emergency room in Port Townsend and get steroids, which worked so quickly I couldn’t believe it. (When I got home, my boss suggested I write a guidebook: Emergency Rooms ’Round the World.)

I remember Clark’s nutcrackers and gray jays.

It never rained. Not once.

Been there?: Yes