Thoughts on Settling Down (in the Inland Northwest)

I started this blog back at the end of 2008 mainly to keep family and friends updated as I moved away from Minnesota to live on Maui. It was an easy way to stay connected and to chronicle all the challenges and adventures (like this one or this one). After leaving Maui a year later, teaching in Thailand for a few months, moving to Washington, getting married, and starting a career, life got not-so-adventurous, and my blogging motivation petered out.

To be honest, I'm not sure whether this second wave of motivation will stick, but I'm realizing how valuable "ordinary" life is, and maybe it's just as worth writing about as it was to write about jumping off waterfalls or being immersed in new cultures or falling in love (with people, with places, with beauty--although does that really ever end?).

I thought about changing my blog name, Wandering Furaha (Furaha means "joy" in Swahili), to something less wander-y, but how sad it would be for me to think that those adventurous experiences are distinct from the present. Though life is different now, as it should be, I still find joy in exploring, even if it's just a walk through our neighborhood, a summer float down the river, or a language-learning app on the iPhone.

Eastern Washington may not have been the place I imagined "settling down," yet the longer we are here, the more it works its way into my heart and surprises me with its opportunity for exploration. A couple times we've been very close to moving away, and it just hasn't felt right. The primary draw is our community (frustrating, messy, gorgeous, glorious people), but we've also learned to wholly appreciate the landscape and pace here on the dry, less popular (and populated) side of the Northwest.

On that note, I want to share a few Inland Northwest spots that have become favorites for us over the last four and a half years. I realize that they don't all technically fit into the "Inland Northwest" region, but I consider anything within a three-or-so-hour drive from us to be our neck of the woods.

Snowshoeing on Mount Spokane

Hoping for this much snow this winter, but it's not looking good....

Coeur D'Alene

The town, the lake, the camping at state parks, you name it.

Steptoe Butte

That's not us paragliding, sadly.

Farragut State Park

On Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho. We went in early fall and it was perfect.

Nelson, B.C.

Technically, we do get some international travel in occasionally. I can't find my own photos, but this is a really fun town.

Here's to more wandering joyfulness!