Ok, I'm now getting around to posting about our vacation earlier in August. We had a grand time! We stuffed 2 adults, 5 kids, 2 large dogs, and all our clothes/tents/sleeping bags/blankets/dog crate/towels/books/etc into the minivan and hit the road. We drove up the coast, drove through LA late at night so as to avoid LA traffic, pulled off into. neighborhood & slept in the car when we got too tired to drive, then kept driving in the morning. We stopped at a place called Oceano Dunes that someone had told us about, and had lunch at a playground in Monterey. We spent a fun day in San Francisco (this was one of the first times we've really taken our kids to a tourist destination kind of city, and it was kind of fun showing it to them). We walked along the bay, through Pier 39, saw Alcatraz in the distance (we checked, but the tickets to go to Alcatraz were sold out for the entire summer a month before our trip -- who knew?), Harley barked at the sea lions, we enjoyed some street performances and got clam chowder in bread bowls for lunch. Then Michael and the boys rode the trolley -- they all got to stand up and hang off the side -- while I walked up the hill on one side of San Francisco, down the other side, and back again with the dogs (who couldn't go on the trolley) and enjoyed the architecture, and we then got to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge on our way north. The next morning we went through redwood country, driving through the Chandelier Tree (one of the big old trees with a hole cut in it just wide enough for our minivan to squeeze through), then we drove through the Avenue of the Giants, and stopped along the way for the boys to swim in a river, before heading up to Oregon.
Oregon was great, being there with Michelle & her family was great, and having Michelle act as our daily tour guide who had fun outdoor activities planned each day and knew the local destinations and catered everything to our kind of adventures was really great! When we arrived at their house the cousins played together, our dogs met Michelle's rabbit (and after one correction Harley decided he wasn't going to try to eat Hestia anymore & he behaved himself and only looking at her longingly from afar after that), we set up the tents for all the cousins to sleep outdoors and we blew up an air mattress for Michael & me to sleep on in the living room. And we went to their branch for church on Sunday, where several locals happened to be out of town so we all got to pitch in and fill in teaching different classes -- I taught the combined class of all the young men and young women. Then we got to spend a whole week with different little adventures each day we visited the Cape Blanco Lighthouse north of Port Orford -- the western-most point in the continental United States, we went blackberry picking and picked SO MANY blackberries! and then roasted hot dogs on the beach with friends, we spent a day at the Sugarloaf swimming hole and walked downstream in search of the bridge until Ri fell and cut his head and we called it a day, we discovered a remote waterfall in a paradisiacal setting about an hour and a half from their house called Coquille River Falls -- which had a relatively easy hike for the kids, large double tiered falls with clear deep pools and a little cliff jumping, there was no trash or graffiti, & we were the only people at the falls all day (definitely the highlight of the trip for me!), we went clamming (no photos -- I didn't take my camera out there because we got all wet and muddy) & crabbing then went home and made clam chowder, we went to beautiful Secret Beach which only exists at extra-low tide and collected mussels then ate crabs & mussels for dinner, then we went on a jet boat tour of the Rogue River. And all of those day trips were interspersed with cousins playing together in the woods near the house, my sister & I watching movies or nature shows together after the kids went to bed, plenty of board games & audio books, cooking together, eating blackberries, going out for sushi on Michael's birthday, Jake being sick unfortunately, multiple original plays performed by all the children in full costume, kids' movie nights, etc. The drive home was quicker -- we started driving around 5pm and continued until around 4am when we pulled off into an orchard to sleep in the car, and then woke up around 7am and drove the rest of the way home by around noon or so. What a great trip!
Oregon was great, being there with Michelle & her family was great, and having Michelle act as our daily tour guide who had fun outdoor activities planned each day and knew the local destinations and catered everything to our kind of adventures was really great! When we arrived at their house the cousins played together, our dogs met Michelle's rabbit (and after one correction Harley decided he wasn't going to try to eat Hestia anymore & he behaved himself and only looking at her longingly from afar after that), we set up the tents for all the cousins to sleep outdoors and we blew up an air mattress for Michael & me to sleep on in the living room. And we went to their branch for church on Sunday, where several locals happened to be out of town so we all got to pitch in and fill in teaching different classes -- I taught the combined class of all the young men and young women. Then we got to spend a whole week with different little adventures each day we visited the Cape Blanco Lighthouse north of Port Orford -- the western-most point in the continental United States, we went blackberry picking and picked SO MANY blackberries! and then roasted hot dogs on the beach with friends, we spent a day at the Sugarloaf swimming hole and walked downstream in search of the bridge until Ri fell and cut his head and we called it a day, we discovered a remote waterfall in a paradisiacal setting about an hour and a half from their house called Coquille River Falls -- which had a relatively easy hike for the kids, large double tiered falls with clear deep pools and a little cliff jumping, there was no trash or graffiti, & we were the only people at the falls all day (definitely the highlight of the trip for me!), we went clamming (no photos -- I didn't take my camera out there because we got all wet and muddy) & crabbing then went home and made clam chowder, we went to beautiful Secret Beach which only exists at extra-low tide and collected mussels then ate crabs & mussels for dinner, then we went on a jet boat tour of the Rogue River. And all of those day trips were interspersed with cousins playing together in the woods near the house, my sister & I watching movies or nature shows together after the kids went to bed, plenty of board games & audio books, cooking together, eating blackberries, going out for sushi on Michael's birthday, Jake being sick unfortunately, multiple original plays performed by all the children in full costume, kids' movie nights, etc. The drive home was quicker -- we started driving around 5pm and continued until around 4am when we pulled off into an orchard to sleep in the car, and then woke up around 7am and drove the rest of the way home by around noon or so. What a great trip!
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