Duck Eggs

Picture this cute little duck growing up running around your yard-

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When it grows up it will be able to eat the bugs in your yard and lay eggs for you to eat-

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Doesn't that sound pretty great?! I plan on having egg laying poultry in my yard someday and after this week, I would choose ducks over chickens. Not only because I think the ducks are cuter than chickens but because their eggs taste great!

I bought 6 duck eggs at a farm in Molalla, Oregon this week and have enjoyed them for breakfast scrambled and fried.

The duck egg in my opinion tastes almost like a chicken egg only the yolk is bigger, creamier and more decadent.

The duck egg shell is more dense and stronger than a chicken egg.

Have you ever tried a duck egg? 

Oregon Farm Visits

This weekend we visited some local farms! We picked some blue berries at Moonridge Farms and bought some duck eggs at Boondockers farm.

I've wanted to try duck eggs for a while so I will let you know how they are.

Boondockers farm was so great because the woman who owned the farm showed us around and told us all about their ducks, piglets, turkeys, cows, bunnies and chickens!

I love visiting farms and I really love how cute piglets and chicks are!!

Portland Oregon!

On the road to Portland

A little Oregon Country Side

We've made it to the oh so cool city of Portland Oregon!

I love this sign!

We went to the Washington County Fair on Friday and to the Portland Saturday Market on Saturday. While in Portland we also went to Powell's City of Books (it was huge and awesome), the Rose Garden, and wandered the streets.

I feel weird being in Portland and the weather is perfect and sunny, I always pictured Portland to be rainy (which it is alot in the winter I understand).

We are parked at a friends house this week and are enjoying their pets!

We plan to explore more of Portland this week and the surrounding areas! Here are some photos of our adventures so far-

At a pretty produce market

The Saturday Market! Lots of cool handmade stuff!

Beautiful Rose Garden

Whole Foods was serving free ice cream samples!!

A poofy headed Alpaca at the fair, it was so cute but I couldn't get a good pic of it. I want to own one now.

Sheep at the fair. I also want to own a cute little sheep too!

Pacific City Oregon

We are loving our time in the beautiful state of Oregon! We spent some time in Pacific City at the Thousand Trails RV park which was pretty nice. They had a mini gold course!

While in Pacific City we visited the nearby town of Tillamook to tour the cheese factory! It was a good tour and included lots of cheese samples!

We also visited the beach many times. It's beautiful and I wanted to go surfing really badly but it was just too cold. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I figured if I couldn't stand on the beach and watch the surfers for more than 5 minutes then I wouldn't do so well out in the water.

Only if you have a full body wetsuit!

This is a lovely little oceanside town and I'm glad we got to explore it!

Our campground had huge bunnies!!

Don't Let a Flat Tire Get You Down

This morning Matt and I got up with a day full of plans but, when we went out to our truck we saw we had a flat tire!! I immediately thought, maybe we can just get on with our plans and the tire will be fine. I couldn't let our plans go up in smoke that easily.

However, we realized we had to step back, exhale and not let our flat tire and our now off schedule plans shake us or ruin our day.

Luckily we were able to air the tire up and take it to a nearby Toyota dealership to get the tire fixed. After we pulled in to the dealership and they told us it would take about 1 hour and 45 minutes I was a little annoyed that we'd be wasting all this time! When I turned around to go sit in the show room, I saw my first Airstream Dealership! It was a big beautiful sight!

As an Airstream owner, I'm healthily obsessed with all Airstreams old and new! We've seen Airstreams for sale at RV dealerships but they never had more than a few to check out. This dealership had probably 60 to look through including old and new! So, as a person that could look at Airstreams all day this place was a perfect place to be stuck while our truck tire got fixed.

So, even though I thought our day would be wasted waiting around to get our tire fixed, we found a place that we would have never gone by otherwise. We really enjoyed talking with the sales man and looking at all the beautiful Airstreams!!

Also, I'm thankful our tire got fixed with no further issues or drama (like getting a flat on the highway or something terrible like that!).

So, something fun and good came from our seemingly bad luck this morning.

How We Get Along Living In An RV!

Matt and I get asked every now and then how we can get along since we're always together and live in a small space. Living in the Airstream does allow us lots of time together (I can't believe we've been traveling for almost 3 months by the way!!).

The way we get along as an RV couple is by doing the things we like as individuals. For me that's taking long walks on the beach, going swimming, riding my bike, reading (currently reading Game of Thrones and love it!), doing yoga, surfing social media and calling my mom :) (hey mom). It's important for us to remember to keep doing the activities we like and if the other person doesn't want to participate, that's ok.

Another way we get along in a small space is that we already like being around each other. As full time RVers we ride from place to place together, trip plan together, eat together, and live in a small space together. We knew this going into it so we were prepared for all the togetherness.

I also think that being a newlyish married couple (we've been married almost 3 years which doesn't seem possible!) makes us like being around each other.

Lastly it's important for us to laugh things off and not correct each other all the time. We are so blessed to be doing what we're doing and we would be crazy to complain.

We also each have duties that we make sure to do known as blue and pink jobs. Although these jobs aren't formally written we know what our specific duties are. By doing our blue (Matt) and pink (Michelle) jobs we make life more pleasant for the other. For example Matt takes care of hitching and unhitching the truck and all things technical. Michelle cooks the meals and makes sure we're happily fed.

Do you have any advice for how to get along with your traveling partner while RVing?

Scenes From Oregon

I'm ready to go snorkeling! I lasted about 10 seconds, it was too cold for the effort!

Sunset over the ocean

Exploring the beach

We went crabbing again!

That's a starfish in our crab trap!

Our haul of red rock crab at the end of the day!

Getting the crabs cooked up!

They're ready

All the crab reduced to their claws

All the crab meat turned into two delicious plates of pasta!

The marina in Newport

Gone Crabbing!

While on the Oregon Coast, we are attempting to do as the Oregonians do and went crabbing!

Walking around the cute little town of Florence Oregon, I was tempted to buy a cooked crab and eat it since we're on the coast and all. Then we learned how easy it is to catch your own crabs and thought we'd buy a crab trap at the local hardware store and go try our luck.

We filled our trap with mackerel and dropped it down into the water from a public pier. After watching all the other crabbers around us pull up so many crabs I couldn't wait to see what was in our trap!

Pulling up the trap!

When we pulled it up it was full of crabs!

Crabs in the trap but not big enough to keep.

None we big enough to keep but after pulling our trap up for the first time, I was addicted. We let the trap down again and checked it about 30 minutes later. We had a keeper the second time we pulled up the trap! (Dungenous Crabs must be male and at least 5 3/4 inches across it's shell in order to keep them.)

Big Man Crab

We let the trap down a few more times at our first location but didn't get anymore big guys. We moved to a new location and let our trap down twice before landing another big crab. After that, we took them home to cook them.

While on the dock at our first fishing location we met an Italian man that cleaned a crab alive in front of us so we could learn "the best way" (according to him) to clean and eat crab. He liked to clean the crab first then cook it because you don't have all the crab inards to deal with after it's been boiled and he swore it tasted better to cook it without the shell and insides, just the legs.

I can't fit a whole crab in my cooking pot since I only have one medium sized pot so, I had not choice but to clean our crabs first since they would be much smaller once their shell was gone. I'm glad I'd had a lesson in crab cleaning earlier in the day. Let's just say I feel like one tough person after cleaning a live crab.

Our Cooking Station Outside

I'm totally addicted to crabbing now! I will be crabbing and cooking crab as we travel up the coast for the next few weeks for sure! It's just so amazing to me that you can simply drop a crab trap down and when you lift it up again you'll potentially have a delicious crab that you can eat! Have you ever been crabbing? 

Et Voila!

What We've Been Up to Lately

We left wine country after 3 days of wine tasting and enjoying all that the Napa and Sonoma area had to offer.

Since wine country we've been driving north on highway 101 through northern California and now we're in Oregon!

I've loved seeing the Pacific Ocean everyday over the last few days. It's chilly, sunny, beautiful and I love it!

Currently we're staying at the South Jetty Thousand Trails RV Park (it's very nice! 2 hot tubs and a heated pool near the ocean!). We'll move every 4 days now up the Oregon coast to different Thousand Trails parks until August!

I've said this many times on this trip I know, but I can't believe how chilly the weather is during the summer! I really had no idea that summer for some people could be so cool and nice! (I'm used to at least 90 degrees but not surprised if it hits 100 degrees in the summer).

One of my goals while being on this beautiful coast is to eat as much crab and shrimp as I can!

Hello from Beautiful Sonoma and Napa!

Grapes for miles!

We're currently in Sonoma enjoying all that this beautiful, sunny area has to offer! We're camping at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds and have driven all through Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley.

Our first tasting!

Now, if you know us, you know we are thrifty. Exploring wine country may sound like an expensive endeavor but, we are having a great time thanks to our Sonoma Passport which allows us to enjoy free tastings at lots of wineries around the area!

Wow grapes!

The Sonoma Passport is great for us because we didn't have any specific wineries we wanted to go to and really didn't know much about wine before getting here. We knew we wanted to see vineyards, learn how wine is made and we knew we wanted to taste some wine!

The Sonoma Passport is $29.99 on Groupon right now (normally $59) and is good all year (that's right, now we have a reason to come back before 2014)! It offers you lots of free tastings (good for 2 people) at participating wineries and some discounts on bottles. We've been able to do 4 tastings now. A tasting often costs about $10 per person for about 4-6 tastes (about 1/4 of a glass of wine) or more if you try more wine or reserve wine. So if we'd paid for the tastings we've done we would be at $80 so the passport is really worth it if you want to taste more than a few places!

Big grape vine

I also found that Mumm Napa (sparkling wine! aka champagne) has a complimentary tour of their winery at 10 am. We really enjoyed this tour and I have a huge appreciation for how champagne is made now (I also now know it's not allowed to be called champagne unless the grapes are grown in Champagne France).

Sparkling wine

On the Mumm Napa tour

Learning about the different types of grapes from our tour guide

At Mumm Napa

The last way we're doing wine country inexpensively is by bringing our food with us. We brought our lunch and had a picnic in Napa. We also brought a loaf of sour dough bread and cheese to eat between wine tastings! If you're truly here on vacation it would probably be awesome to eat at the many lovely restaurants around here.

This area is a beautiful place to drive around and look at the copious amounts of grapes growing everywhere!!

So pretty!

I think if you like wine you'd love it here! If you like lovely weather and a beautiful sunny place you would also like it here.

Lovely flowers

I've got a new appreciation for wine and also know much more about it!

Fancy winery fountain