Wow, 4 weeks back at home went by fast! We spent a few days in Seattle for our friends Bryan and Rachel's wedding and visited with my parents there who were up from California, headed to the Oregon Coast to hang out with Kent's parents, got in a 4 day backpacking trip in Eastern Oregon and scheduled time with friends, family members, and co-workers in Portland until our calendar was packed solid. We even had the opportunity to catch up with our friends from San Cles (whom we traveled with for months in Mexico) as they were visiting Portland the same time we were.

The only shock we experienced back in the US was the drastic price increase in food from a year ago - seems like every restaurant is charging $9-10 for a burger and $50 is the least amount of money you could spend at the grocery store . Oh yeah and of course gas prices are out of control.

Special thanks go out to Laura and Justin for letting us crash at their place in Seattle, Brittany and Mike Roska and Jenny and Charles Turner who each let us invade each of their Portland homes for 2 weeks, John and Ashley Weil who loaned us their spare truck for the month, Lisa and Ryan Carter who let us scavenge in our garage at all times of the day and night, North Sails Portland for their work on our main sail cover and a few other special requests and Liberty and Brian Looney for letting us come visit our favorite Golden Retriever who we have confirmed is having more fun at their house and may not want to come back to live with us in a year!

With over stuffed luggage full of boat parts and other goodies we are off to the airport early tomorrow morning to catch our flight back to Ecuador. We will continue to miss the Pacific Northwest and of course our friends and family and although the month went by in a blur it was great to catch up with a lot of you . For those of you we were not able to see in person we hope to continue keeping in touch via email.

As always our boat is open to anyone wanting to visit us, we have plenty of room and welcome visitors!