Grand Adventures!

Stuff happened this week, but we're only going to tell you about our GRAND ADVENTURES!!!

Grand Adventures #1: CAMPING!!!
This is the part where you stop and say "Wait!  I thought that you guys were leaving for Bear Lake this week?  You're going camping too?!?!  You be crazy!"

Yes, we be crazy.

On Wednesday we pilled the kids in the car, and drove over to the Olympic Peninsula for the camp site on Lake Cresent.  We had gone camping in the backyard and with church, but we had never gone hardcore camping with just our family.  And by hardcore camping, we mean sleeping in a tent, in sleeping bags, but still with flush toilets 20 yards away.  Come on, we have a three year old!

Driving there took a while, with a short stop at a park by the Sound, but the kids actually held up really well.  We set up our campsite, Luke found a billion and a half sticks to play with, and we packed up the kids to go on a hike.  We thought it wouldn't be too bad, yeah it was a 400 ft. elevation change, but the trail was also about 2 miles, so we figured it would be ok.

The awesome park by the Sound - with all the good smelling plant stuff growing in it!

Oh yeah, look at her holding her bottle!  Jacy so doesn't need us anymore right?

Lunch Time!  With our new friends - Yellowjackets!

Little did we know that the vast majority of that 400 ft. was climbing up the side of a cliff!  We also had to stop at every fallen log, because Luke neeeeeeded to climb them.  In the end, we made it, even Marinda.  That night we roasted hot dogs, had some smores and climbed into our tent.  It was funny how Marinda sat Luke down an explained to him some profound points of life:  "You see, camping is many things.  It is sleeping in a tent in a sleeping bag.  It is having a camp fire and playing with sticks.  But most important of all, camping is eating smores!"

We made it!

Look!  Marinda's Alive!  Ish

Luke's so silly

Beautiful out in the woods

Amit even said that this part of camping was pretty fun!

Marinda's mad girl scout skills!

Oh yeah, camping is awesome!

The next morning we tried going for a short hike (<1 mi walk) near Lake Crescent but Luke had a meltdown. The meltdown continued until just about...oh it's still going? Okay, he's been continually melting down since having to sleep in the tent apparently (not because sleeping in a tent wasn't amazing, but because of all three of use sleeping on a slowly leaking air mattress...) Instead of doing the hike we kept driving with a stop at Hurricane Ridge. It was a little smokey but the view was still great. Luke really enjoyed  looking through the telescope, even when the telescope wasn't pointed to anything.

Watch out Luke!  There's a bear behind you!

Jacy's face is just so funny!

Breath taking!  We Love the Northwest!

Luke LOVED the telescope!

Look at this awesome picture Amit took with his phone through the telescope of the glacier!

The highlight of the drive (for Luke at least) came when we had to take a detour because a logging truck had fallen over. We started talking about it and Luke went into 'talk about <insert machine disaster> again" mode. He kept talking about all the way to Hurricane Ridge, and then started saying that the Mighty Machines needed to help the broken log truck.

The rest of the drive home was pretty uneventful, but we were pretty exhausted when we got back. Which would've been fine except for the fact that we were leaving for a 2-day road trip the next day. Yup, we be crazy.

Grand Adventures #2:  ROADTRIP!!!
We were actually debating leaving on Saturday instead of Friday because Marinda was Marinda-sick (nerve disease stuff) when we got home, but, lo and behold, Friday morning Marinda woke up and was feeling okay so we had to do a bunch of last minute packing and got out the door around 10am.

The drive was actually going pretty well. There were fires in the area we were heading and though that made things a little smokey we were still making good time. And then traffic started getting really bad and we saw a sign that said everyone had to get off the highway. Apparently the smoke was so bad that they closed off hundreds of miles of I-84 because of the smoke. So around 4pm, only 4 hours of actual driving into our trip, we had to stop and find a hotel. FYI, Pendleton is actually not a bad place to be stranded - it's one of the bigger towns in Eastern Oregon a we were able to find a nice restaurant (aka not fast food and not Kraft Mac and Cheese) that even had a little lawn area Luke could play in.

Look at that smoke!

We had a long day of driving on Saturday because we had to stop early the night before, but we made it to the 'cabin' just as the sun was going down :)