Road trip!

We have been planning this road trip for a few years now, and it was awesome to see it really some about.  With Dave's sister Amy living on the OR coast, and Jenn and Jeff still in CA it seemed like the perfect year to make it happen.

  

We started of with a stop in ID to see Madison and Cody and meet their new baby.  The kids had a fun playing with him, and we spent a Sunday afternoon visiting a nearby park along the snake river that was beautiful.  It was also fun to see their new house that they had just moved into the weekend before, kudos to them for being game for company right after moving in!

From there we made the really long drive to OR.  Lots of kiddo bonding time in the car, we finished several books on tape, oddles of snacks, many stops for Slurpee's, and lots of listening to Amanda's classical Cd's to keep everyone happy.  

After crossing the mountains we ended up in the rain forests along the McKensie river, where we had a cabin reserved for the night with Amy and Rob.  It was the perfect spot to explore and play from, with a view of the river from the back deck, complete with a fire pit and comfortable seating.  I could have stayed there for the whole trip and been perfectly happy.

We had so much fun hiking and exploring the area

 We came across this awesome music and water sculpture as we were trying to find someplace open for dinner.  

I had read about this mountain biking trail nearby, and was determined that we would do it, thus why we brought bikes along, which ended up being fun for a lot of reasons.  We shuttled to the part that I thought the kids could handle, and after a fair amount searching, finally found where we could start.  Only it was a little more exposed than I had planned on, and I had a few of the kids slightly freaked out.  Amanda bailed with Dave, and the rest of us kept going to find after a mile that the trail was awesome, and way less scary.  Amanda and Dave ended up riding up from the bottom several miles to meet up with us, and we all ended up with an awesome ride in the end.  It was so amazing!!!

Did I mention I could have stayed here the whole trip!?! 

From there we finished the drive to the coast, and it was amazing. We stayed in a nice place near the coast of Bandon, OR.  Amy and Rob lived nearby and graciously showed us around the town, including a trip to this ice cream shop, which incidentally was our dinner for the night.

We spent lots of time exploring along the coast near our condo, and found sea stacks, sea caves, sea stars, seals, and lots of shells.  The kids were in heaven.  Our only complaint was how cold it was for us desert dwellers.  But we adjusted.  And one day we drove inland to find a place to swim in the water where it wasn't quite so frigid.

As we drove to our next destination, we stopped to enjoy the coast along the way.  We decided to do a hike that was pretty spectacular.  

All except for when we miss calculated the trail distance, and ended up biting off more than we could chew.  Lucky for us, Dave and Amy were able to hike to the car, while I kept the kids happy with fries at a local restaurant to get of the rain.  We said goodbye to Amy at this point, and headed for our next stop.

Our next night we spent sleeping among the redwoods in a tiny cabin outside of Jedediah Smith Redwood State park.  It was an amazing place.  The kids learned from a pamplet that this was where they filmed the Wookie scenes from Star Wars.  From there on out, it was a star wars playground.  We basically had this trail to ourselves because we got there so late, and it was awesome.  

 We headed out the next morning for another part of the redwoods and explored a few more places before continuing our drive in land to Sacramento.  

My brother Jeff and his wife Liz, graciously offered their place for us to stay while in town.  Jenn lives a few miles away, so it was perfect to spend time with all of them.  Including Lisa and her crew, which was incredible to spend time with Bennett again.  Maren and Marley loved being together once again.  And by some crazy twist of fate, Tonya and her family were traveling back from a week in Yosemite, and also were at Jeff's house that weekend.  It was like a mini family reunion.  Lots of cousin and pool time, and tons of good food.  It was the best.

I was determined to fit in a mountain biking ride with Jenn while I was here.  And we managed.  Heather, Dallin, and Dave joined us.  It was a lot of fun.  Sacramento was really hot while we we here, so we didn't do anything super long, but it was a fun ride by a nearby lake, and everyone enjoyed the pool when we got back.

 So fun to ride with my sis!

 Our last vacation destination for the trip was jut up the highway a bit to Lake Tahoe.  We stayed in a condo there for three nights, and enjoyed hiking and biking around the lake.  The first night we went on a hike to bear lake, which was so beautiful! 

The kids were pretty burned out of hiking and such at this point.  So the first morning after arriving Dave and I left them at the condo and went and did a pretty epic mountain bike ride in which we were shuttled up to the top of a pass and rode down the pipeline trail to the bottom.  That ride was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip.  The views of the lake were amazing, and I got a break from kids for several hours, and I got some time with this guy, which is always the best!

 

 We did drag them on a few hikes while there, including one where we road the ski lift at Squaw Valley and then hiked down this crazy river gorge.  It was pretty amazing.  We had planned to ride the lift back up after and let the kids roller skate at the rink they had at the top, but sadly they closed super early, and we missed the last lift up. 

Lake Tahoe was the perfect place to spend the evenings after a long day of hiking.

The condo we stayed in Tahoe had this cool loft that the boys slept on.  It overlooked the main living area, and had a crazy steep ladder to get up to it.  When we arrived I mentioned to Dave how it would be awful for a kid to get sick up there, and sure enough on our last night in Tahoe, Spencer woke up throwing up in the middle of the night.  It was awful...I was right.  The other crazy thing was the engine light that went on in our van, they thought it was just the elevation, but when we got home and it went on again we learned it was spider web that had formed near the air intake.  Crazy!

 The last leg of trip was through the deserts of Nevada on our way to help Patty pack up to move from St George to Logan.  It ended up being quite an eventful drive, with crazy big thunderstorms along way, including this one that ended up dropping large hail on us as we drove, and then didn't drive, as we couldn't see.  With my nice bike on top of the car, I was freaking out just a little, but it ended up being OK. And we made it to Patty's in time for dinner.  The only real casualty was when I dropped my phone in the toilet and lost all of my pictures for the last week of the trip.  Luckily Dave had taken lots, and I had sent a few to various people along the way.  So hurrah for a few pictures to blog with!