Forestgnome's Blog

Dear friends and family,

2022 was an epic year of change for us and brought a lot of turbulence as change tends to do. We’ve been so busy that Max is still processing photos from November! And, before I forget to put this information somewhere, we hiked a total of 530 miles this year 🙂

The first change, as you can see, is that we are now doing a yearly blog post as opposed to a physical letter. We also have a whole new system to claim a 2023 calendar, so let’s get that out of the way first. The calendar can be ordered through our Etsy shop at: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1384638041/ellamax-family-2023-calendar

Our new home

To pick up the thread from last year, in January we closed on our second home, located in a little tourist town in southwestern Utah named Kanab. We are in the middle of absolute nowhere, but within easy reach of endless outdoor recreation. We are about 45 minutes from Zion National Park, an hour from Lake Powell, 90 minutes from Bryce National Park, two hours from the Grand Canyon, a short drive to the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Vermilion Cliffs National Monuments, and within about 3-5 hours of Las Vegas, Death Valley National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Bears Ears National Monument, Sedona, and a long list of amazing destinations.

The house we purchased is in a small development about five miles outside the city of Kanab, with five acres of sagebrush on a dirt road. Our plan was to do some remodeling over the winter to prepare for us to settle into the property in the spring. As usual with remodels, the complexity of the project spiraled into madness thanks to some unexpected findings relating to flooring and the sellers’ excessive pet fostering habit. We were fortunate to find a couple of excellent general contractors who lived nearby and had nothing else on their hands at the time.

Max had won tickets to the Wave again for late February, so we headed to Kanab to spend our first nights in what was at the time the world’s most uncomfortable short-term rental. With no furniture and no flooring (yet!), we slept on an Amazon Basics mattress on bare concrete floors with absolutely nothing in the house. We also contemplated the paint colors on the walls, the tile patterns on the floors, and the bathroom countertops, and made some decisions before we left: replace it all.

In April, we headed back down for a week to see how the remodel was turning out. We descended canyons by day and assembled furniture by night, putting together our offices, the dining room, the bedroom, and of course cat furniture. We also opened an endless supply of Amazon packages containing household items sufficient to subsist and thrive in a new house. Starting a household from nothing was a new experience for us.

With the basics taken care of and the remodel largely complete, we headed back to Washington, then returned a week later with Whisper. She associates cars with vet visits, so we plugged in a relaxing pheromone emitter and hoped for the best. We drove for 17 hours straight through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah. About five hours into the drive, she realized that maybe it was even worse than the vet, and decided to hide as far as possible under the blanket in her cat carrier for the rest of the drive. Near Brigham City she was near comatose, so we unplugged the pheromones. Somehow, we all made it alive.

Whisper took to the house and property immediately, hunting up a storm of mice, lizards, and kangaroo rats. The weather was gorgeous and sunny, unlike the wettest spring on record happening in Seattle at the time. Our plan was working.

And just like that, our lives changed completely. We had a wonderful time in Utah during May and June. It was warm. It was sunny. We’d work hard during the week and then get out and canyoneer and hike all weekend. It’s still hard to believe that we can just pop out to East Zion after work for a short hike whenever we want, or descend yet another world class canyon on the weekend. By July, the monsoon season had begun and it was getting way too hot. Time to return to the comfort and convenience of Redmond.

Prior to leaving, Ella took possession of her new wheels – a Jeep Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrid! Perfect for the dirt roads of Utah, with 25 miles of electric range to go shopping.

Family and friends

Back in Redmond, we re-entered civilization. Ella will never take the Costco, Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s down the street for granted again! July brought us some wonderful times with our extended family. Our nephew James and his girlfriend Mieke came to visit us in the later part of July for a couple of days while attending a wedding in Seattle. We took them to see Deception Pass State Park and some tidal flats in Skagit Bay with gorgeous views of the islands. We also went on an epic hike on Mount Rainier starting in Sunrise and going through Berkeley Park and Grand Park. Due to the insane amounts of snow this year, Mount Rainier melted out very late and we were hiking through areas that had just melted out the previous day, which meant very hungry mosquitoes! The views were amazing, but the last couple of miles of the hike were an unforgettable mad dash to the car followed by swarms of bloodthirsty insects.

At the end of July, our niece Bella visited us from New Jersey. We had a wonderful time showing her Seattle, Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier. We also taught this amazing young lady how to canyoneer down waterfalls! It was a welcome reprieve from the 90+ degree weather outside.

We also had one of our canyoneering friends, Sri, stay with us for a few weeks during the summer. It was great to get out into the cold and gorgeous streams every weekend. We definitely spent more time in the water this summer than we have ever done before.

For Thanksgiving, Max’s mom flew in from Maui to visit us and we got to introduce her to the desert. It was definitely a lot colder than she was used to, but she did great! We hadn’t seen her in three years, so it was wonderful to catch up.

Right after Thanksgiving, Ella flew out to Austin, Texas to see some of her family. The weather was fantastic! She went swimming in a local river on the first day and spent a lot of time seeing the local sights on the following days. It was wonderful to see everyone again!

Our first winter in Utah

In early October we headed back to Utah for a canyoneering meet-up in Capitol Reef National Park. We had a great time meeting folks from the Salt Lake City area. Very surprisingly, most were our age and highly educated professionals. We stayed around in Hanksville, the center of the canyoneering universe, for another week to go canyoneering and hiking in the area. One of the highlights was an epic hike through a maze of beautiful canyons to the base of the Golden Throne in Capitol Reef. The way out followed a route shared with Max by a local guide who swore him to secrecy: it included two short but sketchy rappels that were quite difficult to find, but which landed us back down on the official park trail. Somehow, we made it out before nightfall.

This was followed by a visit by our friends Sri and Vineeta for some permits we had obtained to The Subway and yet another visit to The Wave! It was an exciting few weeks here with great Indian food and lots of canyoneering and hiking.

So far our first winter in Utah has been unseasonably cold and surprisingly wet. We’ve had snow several times and a good amount of rain, proving the point that there is no “normal” in the desert. We’ve been canyoneering in the St. George area and the Virgin River Gorge, which are warmer and dryer, and we just spent a few days in Death Valley canyoneering there for the first time with several friends. One of our friends who joined us is a professional photographer in St. George, who has a wonderful blog documenting his off-trail adventures. He wrote a blog post about our day in Scorpion Canyon together, with some great photos of us and the landscapes. You can find it here: https://adamelliottphotography.com/california/death-valley-scorpion-canyon/?fbclid=IwAR1FVTemVdt5xvT3S3cHe4KJKKz_cUnl5f3SpchPSqOMntQuIHEbs4Z30x8

Ella is back on Facebook after many years on hiatus. She will be posting photos of our adventures (providing she doesn’t destroy or drown any more phones!), so please feel free to follow along throughout the year.

Wishing you a beautiful and healthy 2023! Please consider visiting us in our new desert oasis in the spring or fall, or in Redmond in the summer. We have great guest quarters in both locations.

Love, Ella and Max