Summertime in Seattle

If you’ve been to—or even just heard of—Seattle, you’ve probably gotten an earful about the weather. Drizzly and grey. Yes yes yes. It’s all true. But the other weather fact? Seattle in the summer is a playground of sunshine and water. It’s the place to be: temperate, bright, relatively bug-free. It is a common refrain that Seattlites don’t travel during the summer because it’s the season they really moved to Seattle for.

After my mom’s wedding in late May, we were able to head north to Seattle for a few days (and then to Portland, but more on that later) to visit our friends Kata and Barrett. Kata and I have been friends as long as we’ve been alive. Her mom Marit was my mom Courtney’s resident advisor at Seattle Pacific University back in the ‘80s and they became close friends. I was born in Seattle and got to spend my first few years near Kata and her family, growing together.

When my family moved to California, I was too little to remember much of the transition. But I do remember being away from Kata. We visited often then and throughout the years. Kata and I became official pen pals in elementary school (you know, after we could actually write) and we’ve exchanged letters regularly since then. We would fly to visit one another in high school and college times—and now we get to make it a priority since we’re adults. Kata is pure joy, an infusion of oxygen into my life, equal parts sassy, brilliant, and compassionate. She is a rare find.

Kata married Barrett on a crisp fall day in 2017. Their love is awesome and we’ve learned so much getting to be in our own marriage alongside them. What a gift it is to journey with friends through such meaningful experiences. Barrett and Jackson became friends by default, but really would have hit it off on their own, without any of our help. They’re both zany engineering types who love cats, traveling, games, beer—I mean, the list really does go on.

We were delighted to catch both Kata and Barrett this time (covid and work has made it difficult to wrangle all four of our schedules). We got to stay in their darling new home with a water view on one side and forest on the other. Jackson fell in love with Spicy Cat (see the beast below). We played games. We grilled salmon (as one does in the PNW) and enjoyed Paper Planes (the current Karrett signature cocktail). We sat out on their giant deck and chipped away at the summer daylight with conversation and laughter.

Barrett even took time to teach Jackson how to drive stick shift! J did pretty well: no grinding of the clutch, no stalling, and he handled a crowded intersection and a sharp turn with ease. And Barrett didn’t dig a panic hole into the floorboards with his feet like my mom always seemed to be doing when I was first learning to drive.

This visit, we didn’t do many classically Seattle things in the tourist sense. But we did experience our best version of Seattle: visiting dear friends and enjoying grilled veggies with a side of curious questions. Till next time, Karrett!

xo,

em

MomMom’s Bach Bash

For my mom’s bachelorette weekend, we took a trip with just us “Grager Girls” to Scottsdale, Arizona. I’ve never met a trip I didn’t love to plan almost as much as I loved to go on. So, we set off for the sunshine and enjoyed a pool day, a spa day, hiking, and so many incredible meals and drinks. I won’t give all the deets here (I’ll save that for another time with what we would recommend and skip next time) but here are some photos from a great fiancé finale!

Our 3 Favorite Camping Spots within 2 hours of Nashville

There’s a growing list of why we love camping:

• cooking your food in the wilderness

• sitting in a hammock for hours on end

• ruminating on big ideas by the fire

• taking in the whispery light of morning

• snuggling with a puppy on your lap and a beer in your hand

• hanging out with friends far from distractions

We could go on and on. Camping has been a grad-student-budget-friendly way for us to feel like we’re getting to travel a bit. Since we pack everything into the car, we are pretty versatile in terms of the kinds of sites we use. Sometimes we go full boondock or even ditch the car and walk in a bit with a tent. For the most part, we try to find sites away from the big RVs and campers and opt for something more primitive. We give strong preference to places that have a scenic drive, good local hiking routes, and interesting terrain.

We’ve camped our from Tennessee to California and back, up and down the coast. We’ve camped in the Rocky Mountains at -13 degrees; we’ve camped in July in a heat wave of 101 in Nashville. (Not that we’d recommend either, but it’s possible). Having to bring all your stuff with you reminds you how much stuff you have (and probably don’t need). We’ve camped with groups of friends for birthdays. We’ve camped just us—no other souls—in the desert. We’ve gotten so see so much of this country and meet so many folks through our adventures. If you’re interested in starting your own camping adventure, but not ready to convert one of your cars into a camper, then here are a few of our favorite places near Nashville that we’d recommend trying out. We saved the best for last.

Evado Travel

3. Fall Creek Falls Campgrounds

This is one of the more popular sites in Tennessee and for good reason—it’s got all the amenities you need and is only 45 minutes from Virgin Falls. If you’re not into camping, they’ve also got lodge rooms and cabins for rent in the area.

Cost: $9 to 43

Location: 2009 Village Camp Rd, Spencer

Reservations: Online

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RoverPass

2. Cedar Creek Campground

With views of Old Hickory Lake, settle in for a restful weekend at Cedar Creek. Snag one of the lake-front campgrounds and enjoy the other offerings: showers, swimming, boating, fishing, ADA accessible sites, bbq pits, and a playground. There are electrical hook ups and even a washing facility if you’ve been camping for a bit and need to do some laundry. Only 40 minutes outside Nashville (30 from east!), Cedar Creek is a great option.

Cost: $30

Location: 9264 Saundersville Rd, Mt. Juliet

Reservations: Online

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1. Merriweather Lewis National Monument Campground

I truly debated whether or not to share this one. Because it’s my absolute favorite and I’m selfish like that. Alas, I gave in to my better angels and opted to reveal this gem. Merriweather Lewis’ place of death (spooky) is just off the Natchez Trace. Right around here is my most favoritest gold star diamond camping spot. It’s not crowded. It’s free. It’s 90 minutes from Nashville. It’s a beautiful drive to get there. It’s near several hiking trails and waterfalls. It’s ADA accessible. It has real bathrooms. And trash cans. And fire pits. I MEAN. C’mon. Just do me a favor and don’t spoil it for anyone else, k? K. Bring your own firewood (we may have learned this one the hard way).

Cost: Free

Location: Milepost 385.9 off Natchez Trace

Reservations: None required

First Annual NYE Ski Trip

Waikiki

In November 2019, we visited Hawaii for the International Conference on Social Justice and Education at U Hawaii put on by Kevin Kumashiro. Not only was the location beautiful, but the conference was warm and encouraging as well as diverse. (I highly recommend selecting your conferences based on the quality of the topic and the quality of the location).

Jackson had not yet been to the Hawaiian Islands while I, on the other hand, have spent a bit of time hopping between them over the years.

We brought our film camera and spent the week retreating from the chill of Nashville to soak up the heat of the sun in Waikiki.

We tried Burmese food. We lunched at the Royal Hawaiian. We sat in lounge chairs and read until we ran out of pages and mai tais. We went out with friends and filled our bellies with modern Hawaiian fusion cuisine. We floated above the ocean, parasailing. We spent our evenings watching the sunset at the beach and listening to live jazz.

Now it feels like a world ago. The idea of getting on a plane with ease and disembarking to a tropical world are distant. But we can reminisce.

Going Home

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Yosemite

Visiting Scratch Brewing

Scratch Brewing.

A point of interest on any beer mecca map. I won’t wax poetic because I don’t know it like Jackson does. You can read his blog for that.

Instead I’ll say I was along for the ride this time (as I often am when it comes to breweries) and I enjoyed it. Jackson prefers to find brewers who are doing something different in their process. It might be in the way that collect ingredients (Scratch forages!), collaborate with folks, or build community partnerships. Whatever that ‘it’ factor is for him in choosing breweries to visit, he’s a good bloodhound. We haven’t found a flop yet.

But I know Scratch is special to him. Even amongst all the Belgian breweries and fantastic places we’ve been in California. Scratch gathers their ingredients from exactly where they are. They forage for local chanterelles and pick up discarded tree barks. I have a true imagination for food but with beer, I wouldn’t know where to start when it comes to adding mushrooms. (Can you tell the Chanterelle Biere de Garde was my favorite?).

Even in the semi-cold (note that we kept our coats on) and in the covid (outside and distanced and less brewer-customer chit-chat than normal), we enjoyed being in their space in Ava, Illinois. We planned to camp nearby so we could take our time and bask in the freckles of light coming through the changing leaves.

While we sipped, I found myself impressed with the layout of Scratch. It doesn’t look planned. The buildings unfold in an organic way, as though their structures were foraged, found at a certain time and place and put to use for creating more possibilities. It’s not exactly rustic (a word that makes me cringe when applied to weddings) but it certainly is homey. It feels like a place that’s authentic, not trying to hard, only wearing mascara and chapstick. It’s got on its favorite jeans and it doesn’t think twice about wearing the comfortable shoes.

We tried four from the menu and we brought a couple of bombers back to share with friends.

And we’re heading back to Scratch soon! Now that the weather is nice enough for us to shed our coats and the trees to have shed and regrown new leaves, it feels like we’re due for a visit at this haven.

We are always looking for recommendations on where we should travel in the Southeast (ok, and beyond with the camper). Hit us up if you have ideas!

xo,

em

My First Taste of Colorado

In seventh grade, my friend Leanne and I wrote boyfriend lists. These, of course, were the lists of qualifications a man would have to have to be our boyfriend. Drink deeply of the toxic sexuality culture that told us girls had to be interested in boys and people could meet expectations and there was one person for each other! Mmmmm smells like the empathy in the pages of Shameless (Nadia, we will forever be grateful).

Here’s a snippet of my list: Love Jesus. Loves me. (yes, in that order)—yes that part was written down!— Musical. Skier (not snowboarder). Looks good in a tux.

I’ve only pulled out that list since to laugh at it. Some things I anticipated: Jackson loves the hell out of me. Truly. And he looks f***ing incredible in a tux. He’s musical enough that if we produce children, they’re unlikely to be tone deaf (ok that’s an understatement - he’s actually surprisingly musical). He has a curiosity about God and God’s world that goes beyond my 12-year-old conviction that he should LOVE JESUS. I mean. Yeah. What can I say? I married the man of my dreams? Isn’t that rude to say? Well. Too late.

But folks! This was a momentous occasion! Jackson had visited Colorado and I had only dreamed of it for, I dunno, two decades. And of course I’ve been skiing since I could walk and Jackson had never clicked on those two flat boards and felt the freedom of flying down the mountain. He had snowboarded a handful of times (which I grew up calling ‘The Dark Side’ in a very admonishing Jedi voice). But he hadn’t really skied. Or at least we had never been skiing together.

Potato, in his apres wear

This was now a high-stakes trip. Jackson decided he would give skis a chance and I agreed he could swap to snowboarding if he hated them. When I asked if he wanted to sign up for lessons, he said, “well, I was hoping your roster wasn’t already full!” So this was to be, as we like to call it, a marriage-tester. Ya know, one of those things where you can so clearly see the possible endings at the beginning of the road, and you do it anyway like a choose your own adventure with one of several potential prewritten finales.

We got to see my dear friend from college, Haley, and her husband Jordan, who bailed us out when our non-sub-zero windshield wiper fluid froze in the tank. (We could not see. Why does non-sub-zero even exist?) Then, we arrived in Breckenridge with a few friends from our Nashville pod (we played it safe, y’all), got fitted for our rentals, unpacked our things into the cabin, and popped into the hot tub to plan how we’d use the freshly powdered hills the next two days. Because availability of ski passes (even with an Epic pass, as we found out) was difficult to come by, we decided to all ski Breck the first day and then Jackson and I would take off to try A Basin the second, which came highly recommended by our Colorado-ski-pro friends and neighbors, the Orners.

We had an EXCELLENT time! I was relieved and happy. Jackson started off stronger than we could have hoped on skis and by the end of day one was confidently cruising down a blue and green on his own. We ended the first day tired but content to have spent it with some great friends and on some great hills. I got to bomb down a couple black diamonds at the end of the day and found myself riding with a woman in her forties who was on the hill with her family and had been released by her husband to go do a couple ‘real runs’ while the rest of the fam did blues. We were both ecstatic and free women, flying and carving and feeling our thighs burn from underused muscles reawakened.

Jackson has officially caught the skiing bug. He was planning our next ski trip on the way back to the cabin, day two. Safe to say this marriage-tester had a happy ending and my inner twelve-year-old is cackling with gluttonous satisfaction like she knows she shouldn’t be.

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Please, don’t pretend to be surprised that we stopped for celebratory beers. And Potato. That kid. He never can get enough pets: when you have one hand for beer, you have one hand for uninterrupted puppy pets, no?

After we packed up the cabin and our friends went on to ski another hill or return to the working world, we kicked off our winter road trip (yes I know I’m way, way overdue for sharing photos and memories from that but just deal, ok?)

More on the rest of the road trip later!

xo

em

The Reimers Love The Hillyers

Meet the Hillyers! They’re some of our closest friends. Sunee and I became close friends in fourth grade and we’ve stayed that way since. From TP-ing at sleepovers to planning weddings and baby showers, we’ve experienced a lot of life together. The Hillyers have been in Seattle for the last while and they’re on a new adventure — moving back to the Bay Area — right before their little dude Jude turns one. (How is he already a year old?! *cries*). Their move back to my mom’s hood means we’ll hopefully get to see them more.

AND they are moving specifically to be ingrained in the city of San Francisco, equipping the global church in everyday discipleship. (Check out their link and support them, would ya?!). Adam and Sunee are two folks whose hearts are full of hope in a hard world, who are fervent believers in compassion and listening to one another, who walk out what it means to love their neighbors. Jackson and I are excited to see what this new chapter holds for the Hillyers.

We got the chance to visit them and meet Jude in August. Pandemic restrictions meant we couldn’t go to restaurants or see the city like we normally would have done, but Sunee and Adam took us blueberry picking and picnicking by the lake. We walked around the harbor, snapped some photos, and generally just cooed over Jude. With all the blueberries we picked (and there were many), we made blueberry crumble, blueberry pancakes, blueberry margaritas, and blueberry margaritas. We ate fresh caught salmon and grilled veggies and laughed until the sun extinguished.

The embrace of an old friend, a good friend, is like nothing else. They’re the family we choose.

xo

em

Big Sur in the Summer

In August, we hopped on our first flight in the brave, new covid world. Our inspiration? Getting to meet the beautiful baby Jude. My dear friend Sunee Hillyer had her first baby right before the start of quarantine and it’s been hard to watch him grow for months from a distance.

SO we made arrangements. With the Hillyers in Seattle, we thought we’d maximize our west coast time by seeing my mom in the Bay Area and eventually making it to see my Grampa (the lovely Vince) in the LA area. Since Grampa is at higher risk of contracting covid, we wanted to put 14 days between our visit to other folks and to see him, which we managed by renting a deep-cleaned car up north and driving leisurely down the coast.

THE COLORS, Y’ALL.

The curves and the textures and the sound of wind whipping through the brush and rushing up the rocks.

It was pure delight. There was a moment when the clouds manifested in the shape of waves. I mean. WHAT.

Hope this sunshine brightened your day a bit.

xo

em

6,386 Miles. Off We Go!

August 2020. We winded down the twists of the Pacific Coast Highway, the ocean lapping at the sandy edge of California. Three days before, we’d driven south through the Redwoods, putting some time and distance between our plane flight to Seattle (masked and middle seat empty) before we’d visit family in the Bay Area. There, staring at those shaggy-barked giants, we talked about how we wished we could stay for longer than a day. By the times we’d reached Big Sur, the bee in my bonnet was buzzy enough to provoke me to say, “What if we turned our car into a camper?”

Classic Emma. Another wild idea that I’d have to save for another day.

To my surprise, Jackson nodded slowly, then turned to me and said, “I think we should do that. It’s kind of out there, but since we’re still social distancing, we could take it out, be in the woods, reading and writing for school and for our own stuff. I’m down.”

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October 2020. We took the 2x4s that had been in the wall in our new house that we hired Chris Crowder Construction (highly recommend) to remove. I channeled my childhood afternoons spent drawing elaborate plans for impossible forts and drew some mock-ups for the build. A few trips to Lowe’s later, and we had a saw, plywood, and bolts to secure our structure to the car. See our conversion (and a few of our restful days) in October in the video below!

Fast-forward to Thanksgiving. We’d been in full isolation and trying to assess what our holiday season would look like this year given the spikes of COVID across the nation. We knew we didn’t want to fly. But driving would be kind of nuts, right? How would we do it without exposing ourselves to other people? And how long would it take? Could we figure out a way to see Grampa in Southern California on the way to see Mom in Northern California? SO MANY QUESTIONS.

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December 2020. Let’s start with the gratitude we have for our friends watching our plants and home - y’all rock!

We’re all packed up (a photo of that later) and hitting the road! We’ll have intermittent service, but we’ll do our best to post an occasional update. If you’ve got any favorite road trip things—car games, radio stations, podcasts, albums, audiobooks, stops we hadn’t considered, tips and tricks—drop us a comment! With over 116 hours in the car ahead of us, you might just be saving our sanity.

The twelve national parks we plan to hit:

1. Rocky Mountain

2. Arches

3. Canyonlands

4. Bryce

5. Zion

6. Sequoia

7. Kings Canyon

8. Yosemite

9. Joshua Tree

10. Grand Canyon

11. Petrified Forest

12. Hot Springs

Catch you on the flip side, folks!

xo,

em (and jacks and tato)

A few photos from a French summer

[image: a couple make their way down a French alleyway paved with cobblestones and lined with cafes

[image: Me (Emma) holding a digital camera, overlooking a river in Lyon, France, with historic buildings on a hill in the background]

[image: a colorful photo of a blue sky with a classic car driving down a road lined with greenery, with a windmill in the background]

[image: a photo of Jackson (my husband) tucked into some vines, wearing a backpack and sunglasses, in front of a historic building]

[image: a photo of a neon sign that says “Vilfeu” and has an ice cream cone on it]

[image: a film photo of the windows and roofs of a Hausmann style building in Paris]