Second month
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Just a couple of birds, having some fun, showing off their plumage!!
We are not campers. When we were dating, I invited Byron to come along on a group camping trip. His response was not only to decline me, but to indicate that he felt camping was “mocking the homeless.”
Ah, how things have changed. We have decided to venture, as a family, into the wild world of camping (pun intended). We actually decided this many months ago, but sometimes it is hard to turn intentions into actions. Luckily, we had some friends invite us up to
First purchase: a hiking backpack for
See how much
Being the outdoorsy individuals we are, we went right ahead and put it to good use. I’ve never seen him enjoy vacuuming that much!
The tent was another matter entirely. Long story short, we were at REI the day before our trip and FINALLY bought our tent. And here we are the night before the trip, dutifully making sure that we will indeed be able to construct a shelter in the wild. Only, this is actually our living room.
The trip began with a 3AM departure time.
He is attempting to hold her hand in this picture. He is very unsubtle with his advances; she is appropriately demure and aloof.
These kids hold hands between their two car seats whenever they drive somewhere together. We can’t wait until they meet up again at BYU in a few years!
We loved
But honestly, who wouldn’t enjoy camping on an air mattress?? Thank you Chris and Sarah, for showing us just how luxurious camping can be. I think using an air mattress to "camp" really is almost mocking the homeless.
And although it looks idyllic and peaceful, there was a darker side to our trip. We were fighting for survival for our entire overnight camping trip.
It got so cold at night; we couldn’t believe it. Poor
Also, we had to deal with BEARS. I was never afraid of bears before this trip, but Byron and my friend Sarah scared me to death with their talk of bear attack etiquette, bear spray, bear bells, bear boxes and general bear anecdotes.
So, of course, after scaring me to death for two weeks before the trip, they slept soundly through the night while I was up all night, listening to bears pounding on the bear boxes in our campground. Byron claims that at one point I woke him up to tell him that I didn’t want to die. That sounds dramatic now, but I felt it very strongly at the time.
Then, to add insult to injury, I awoke to a campground full of naysayers, who refused to believe that bears had been carousing in our campground overnight. But I feel I was ultimately vindicated, because one of the couples with us DID see a bear as they were leaving our campground. I knew I heard bears at night!!
We don’t have a picture of the actual bear (or bears) but here is the box I’m SURE they were pounding on.
All told, we loved Yosemite and came away from our first camping trip pretty much unscathed. In fact, we may in fact love camping;
This post is SO delayed, but I’d already started it a few weeks ago so I had to finish it – it has been delaying many other things from being posted that have happened since then!!
We had such a fun trip up to
However by the end, it wasn’t quite so pretty.
Our accommodations along the way at times left a little to be desired.
But what they lacked in shower height, they certainly made up for in décor.
This half wagon wheel jutting out of the wall appeared to serve absolutely no purpose, except to make our trip just that much more enjoyable!
We saw a lot of beautiful vineyards, got car sick from the winding road and stopped in Mendocino for breakfast and a photo op.
At one of our lovely motels, Byron picked up a pamphlet on a place called “Trees of Mystery” which was on our way up the coast. He became a little obsessed about molding our plans around a visit to this place. I was appropriately skeptical. I mean, “Trees of Mystery?” In order to accommodate a visit to this place, we stayed in a crazy, horror movie type motel, in a town where no restaurants were open, and delayed our arrival in
Two words: Worth it!!
How can you go wrong, when you are welcomed by a huge Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox??
And to put it into perspective…
I will not bore you with the ONE HUNDRED AND SIX pictures that I took at “Trees of Mystery”. Just know that I now think trees are totally amazing. Okay, maybe a few pictures couldn’t hurt…
View from the top
Just know that it is awesome, Byron was right. And definitely go, if you’re ever going to be passing through Klamath,
We also had a TON of fun spending a week at the beach house on the
We were so glad Grandma and Grandpa Williams and Aunt Sheri could come too!!
We loved visiting the Tillamook Cheese Factory.
And we just couldn’t resist letting him try a little Tillamook ice cream. From the looks of it, we created a monster!!!
And we absolutely LOVED crabbing!!
(I guess it is pretty obvious from these pictures that Harrison’s open-mouth smile is clearly a genetic trait passed down on the
It was really fun just spending time at the
