It’s official. Emily and I have officially left the wonderful town of Corvallis, OR. I had been in Corvallis for 1 month shy of 6 years while Emily had been there one month shy of 4 years. It was the longest either of us had lived in one place since leaving our childhood homes for college. I can’t say enough how amazing Corvallis is and how much I will personally miss the beautiful little town and all of our best friends that are still there.
We are moving because Emily was offered a job at the Clatskanie, OR mill on the Columbia River about 45 minutes northwest of Portland. Along with a nice raise, working at the bigger mill will eventually prime her for taking over an HR Manager role at a mill in the northwest down the road. Watershed Sciences (now renamed WSI) has an office in downtown Portland so this worked out for me as well. In June I interviewed at the office and they wanted me there as of the 1st of July as they were super busy with large projects that I had experience to help with.
So, for the last 4 weeks Emily and I have been living out of a La Quinta Inn hotel in Salmon Creek, WA at the junction between I-205 and I-5. Emily has an hour commute to work from there and I have about a 20-30 minute commute via bus to the downtown office. The C-Train 134 bus takes me directly from the large and newly rebuilt Salmon Creek Park & Ride directly downtown within a block of my office with no stops in between! Emily listens to audiobooks on her drive while I work on my laptop (writing this post on the ride now actually). On the way home the bus picks me up at a stop about 50 feet from the entrance to my building. It’s very convenient although it costs $113 a month it ultimately will save me gas and parking garage fees in the city.
After nearly a month of desperately looking for places to rent in the Salmon Creek area we found a nice 3 bedroom/2.5 bath house in a small community on the border of Ridgefield and Salmon Creek. It’s far more spacious than our little apartment in Corvallis and we were excited to have the room for all of our gear that we now have a garage for! On Sunday Danielle and Scott helped us move all of our stuff in one go using a 20’ Uhaul truck. They helped us unload all the heavy furniture and get all the boxes into the garage before we took them out to dinner on Sunday night at Beaches on the Washington shore of the Columbia.
Emily and I have a lot of exploring to do in our new area. We were stoked to find a place in Ridgefield as it is on the northern outskirts of Vancouver in a nicer area and closer to the country side. From what we have seen of Vancouver (Vantucky as Portlanders call it) we do not like it. Downtown Vancouver and the waterfront is beautiful but the rest of the area reminds me of Albany, NY which I was never fond of, just a lot of box building chain stores and chain restaurants and many unsavory people walking around. It’s also a far more conservative town than Corvallis. The Prius cars we saw in Corvallis have now been replaced by either lowered trucks with loud bass systems or raised trucks with giant tires and loud exhaust systems. But, like I said, we have tried to avoid that area by living further north.
Emily and I are going to really miss all of our friends in Corvallis. We both agree that it is the right career move for both of us but losing the convenience of living walking distance from all of our best friends is rough and not knowing anyone in our new offices isn’t fun either. I’m sure we will adjust with time but right now I miss all of my friends and have a lot of work to do setting up our new place...
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