Our new place

We’ve been here not even 2 weeks…we still have a ton of stuff strewn across two storage units in town and we’re not close to organizing the stuff not in storage.  But it finally feels like we’re “moved in” after Jackie flew back to Missoula and returned with the horse, llama, truck and trailer.  We couldn’t have picked a more different place to live….in our last place in the middle of the  Bitterroot Valley on a clear day you could see nearly 50 miles to the north and south and to the Bitterroot range 15 miles to the west and to the Sapphires 15 miles to the east.  As you can see from this Google Earth image, our horizon at our new home is vastly more limited.

Lots of people tell us that we’ve “moved to the rainiest place in Washington”, but we haven’t seen a drop yet.  Supposedly it’s a very dry summer….probably accounting for issues we have been having with our well at home and at the kennel.  Running out of water would have been at the bottom of my list of anticipated problems.  We seem to be getting a handle on the water issue – I think.  We have also seen a lot of weird faces when we tell people that we moved from Montana to Grays Harbor County.  I don’t think this area has seen much of an influx of fresh faces in recent years.  There’s not much to McCleary…there’s a little more in Elma (8 miles away) and everything
you could possibly need is 15-25 miles away in Olympia/Lacey/Tumwater. We haven’t yet had time to drive 45 minutes west to the coast.

In Bozeman, Dave had a 45 mile round-trip commute each day and in Missoula it was 65 miles a day.  That’s about 300,000 miles to and from work the past 20 years.  Careful what you wish for….but the commuting time has been cut drastically.  Below (left) you can just see the house in the background from the kennel and below (right) you can see our view of the kennel from our porch.
We’re getting the hang of the kennel…Amanda and Marc – the two employees we inherited – are awesome. I’ve always thought of myself as a great employee over the past 30 years, but I really do notice a “pride of ownership” that I never have really felt before. Country Inn Pet Resort is on Facebook and I’m just beginning to get the website up and functional.  We’ll check back in soon.  Here’s a few more photos….

p.s. Miss you all in Montana….