Vintage Home and Farm

My husband has been reading a local history and true crime book, Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest , by Gregg Olsen.  He had a hard time putting the book down as the story was so compelling. Starvation Heights is the nickname given to the sanitarium created by Linda Hazzard, a self-appointed doctor and "fasting specialist" who didn't actually have a medical degree or any formal training.  In the early 1900s, as part of her treatments, she intentionally starved a number of her patients to death. She also swindled her wealthy victims, convincing them to turn over all of their money and property to her before they died. Well, coincidentally it had been a while since we'd gone out on an afternoon drive, and so I managed to convince my husband that we should take a drive and see if we could find the remains of the building that had served as Linda Hazzard's sanitarium.  It was located out near Puget Sound in the...

On Sunday we were feeling restless and needed to get out of town, and so we decided to do a little exploring outdoors and take a drive out to see the Sol Duc waterfall. Forty five minutes into the drive, we reached the Sol Duc turnoff from highway 101 and discovered that the road was closed.  Well, that was unfortunate for us, but we were determined to continued on to explore somewhere, and we ended up in Forks where we enjoyed seeing Bella's truck and exploring the Twilight information in the Visitors Center.  At the suggestion of the friendly host in the Visitors Center, we continued on to Rialto Beach.  What a beautiful place!  I thought I'd share a few of our photos.  Rialto Beach, and Forks for that matter, are definitely worth the drive.   As soon as we parked in the beach parking lot, we were amazed at the huge piles of logs that had washed in from high tides.  We were also curious to find that this is a black-sand beach made from volcanic ...

Crabbing season is coming up and so we've been working on getting the boat ready. Even though it was raining, we wanted to get away from the house and so we thought we'd go for a drive and take a look at the boat docks at Lake Sutherland and Lake Crescent and get a sense of what these beautiful lakes looked like for boating.  During our drive, Elizabeth took a few photos from the back seat of the car. We're looking forward to sharing photos when we go out for our first boating trip here in the Olympic Peninsula!

The other day I had the pleasure of a leisurely drive along Highway 101 with a friend. We were headed out west to Forks, where we participated in a beginners' cedar bark basket weaving class taught by Quileute Tribal Elder Phillip Ward.  When we signed up for the class, I was imagining a very large basket woven by my clumsy hands, and came prepared with several big plastic bags to carry our baskets home in (it does rain a lot in Forks and I didn't want our newly-made baskets to get wet).  I was a bit wet behind the ears myself, as it turns out these were tiny baskets that we made. They were so small that we could tuck them into our pockets or purses.  I was enlightened as I discovered how difficult baskets truly are to weave and I have new respect for the craftsmanship and art of basket weaving.  These little baskets took a lot of concentration and just under three hours to weave.  As we headed home, our little baskets looked quite lovely sitting on the das...