Washington Trip #5-6

The next day we drove over to Montana to do the most expensive part of our trip.  My parents found that the ski resorts offer big discounts on their condos/apartments for off season stays.  We stayed in a 3 bedroom apartment and the kids kept giggling that they got their own room and it had a bathroom and a tv.  They did share the bed, but not always equally apparently.

We paid for the kids to do the all day activities passes.  That included the ski lift to the top of the mountain.  They did that one a couple times.

This picture is the kids "running" in the air.

We got to go swimming twice.  The water was nice after you got used to it and the starts came out while we were out.

Part of their pass included a bag of sluice each for them to find 'gems'.  They loved looking for all their favorite rocks. 

This was Ada's favorite activity.  She's always loved rocks and minerals.

We got out there to play by 9 am.  Apparently all the activities open at 11 am.  Instead of going back to our rooms we decided to play lawn games.  They had a giant connect 4, giant checkers (when I played with Evelyn she had a Queen and a Princess instead of two Kings), giant chess and this lawn game that you try to get 21 points by throwing a rope with two balls.  We played them all and 2 hours passed very quickly.

Ada's second favorite activity was the trampoline.

Evelyn made the lady smile a lot.  She just giggled so much doing this. 

This was Seth's favorite activity too.

Evelyn is quite the climber, she always has been, but she had more fun climbing about half way up and letting go on purpose so that she could repel down over and over again.

Ada was frustrated with this one.  She used to climb fairly well, but between her hiking shoes, sweaty hands and growing body she struggled this time.  I hope that she'll try again sometime to see that she's okay even if something was hard once.

This kid loved the rock wall.  He climbed the #1 and #2 walls over and over.  He looked like Spiderman on #2.  He could get about half way up #3 but would get stuck trying to get over the lip of one. 

I love this.  Sam on one side, Seth on the other.

The older two were big enough for the ziplines.  The younger two were not.  They loved them.  They did not love that they had to bring the wheel assembly back to the top of the zip line when they were done.  They are pretty heavy when you carry them uphill.  They carried them up once, then Jer and I went down to carry them up the second time they did it.  The next time Ada did it, I carried it part way and she carried it part way.

At the top of the mountain there was a village of prairie dogs.  They kept following my kids hoping to get fed.

Evelyn kept laughing that this little guy kept rubbing his paws together as if he were begging.

My Dad challenged Sam to a game of chess.  My Dad is the one who taught me checkers and the basics of chess.  I remember doing that with him.

Ada and Grandpa

We saw some wild turkeys on the way up the mountain.  My mom wanted to take a picture of them with my Dad in the picture.  They kept joking that there would be 6 turkeys in the picture if they did that.

Seth had fun doing this too.  He'd only get up a little ways, but he never stopped trying.

Ski lift buddies kept looking for bears.  There were huckleberries about halfway up the mountain.  We were going to do the 2.5 mile hike down from the top so that we could pick them on the way back, but the kids kept complaining that it was too hot and that they didn't want to hike in the hot.  So poor Jer got overridden on that one.  It's too bad because it looked like half of it was a gorgeous hike next to a little stream.

Apparently the pool was too cold after a while.  The hot tub seemed nice.

Washington Trip #4

My parents took us to Post Falls park the next day.  This one reminds me so much of my favorite park as a kid.  There was one down in Provo with a little stream, Willow trees and a train to climb on.  This one had all the old park toys that are being taken out of parks now, willow trees, ponds, ducks, geese and a little walk around it to see how the electrical plant has been built and running with a lot of the same equipment since 1906.  It was really neat.

Sam was the only one that got close up to the geese, the rest threw them nuts and seeds from a respectful distance in case they decided not to wait their turn.

This is Evelyn swinging in the tree.  It reminded me of the book The Giving Tree.  I'm going to have to read that to her.

Afterwards, my sister Janelle had given my parents a gift certificate to Red Robyn.  So thanks to Nellie, we all we out and ate in Coeur d'Alene.  Then we went down to the area that was basically the boardwalk.  I think this was my favorite.  I could stay at that park and let the kids swim all day.  It was very smoky that day, so we couldn't see the view very well, but it was gorgeous as is.  They have a park that's like our Discovery park at home and little beach areas all around the lake.  We got to see sea planes take off and land, as well as para-gliders behind speed boats and a model ship being driven.  Sam and Ada wanted to swim while Evelyn and Seth did not.  My Mom and I took the swimmers while my Dad took the other two to the park.  Jer drifted from one of us to the other.  I liked sitting on the edge of these steps.  Sometimes big waves would come and surprise us as they ran down from one side of the steps to the other.

My Dad said that Eagles are a big deal at this lake.  During November they come to fish right before the winter.  They said that if you come at the right time you can see them diving all over the lake.

After everyone was all tired out, we went to a place that the missionaries have been telling my parents about.  They have gigantic ice creams.  One is called the Gooey Monster.  We got three on of them to share and probably should only have gotten two.  They were huge!

These red flowers made me think of my Grandma Wilcox.  She always had them lining her front walk way. 

Washington Trip #3

Tuesday we spent biking the Hiawatha Trail.  It's the one that Elder Vern P Stanfield talked about in the October General Conference in 2015.  It has a 1 1/2 long tunnel to begin with that's absolutely dark.  We got through pretty well with the head lamp that Jer borrowed from my Dad in the front and everyone with weaker lights following behind.  We went through several tunnels and over many trestle bridges.  The trail is 14.7 miles of track that used to be a train line.  This year was it's 20th anniversary.  I loved all the blurbs along the trail that were talking about the railway line and was very surprised to read a lot about the 1910 fires and how devastating they were.  A little ironic to be reading them when there are hundreds of fires over this half of the United States.  I have two cousins that live in Spokane, so we were able to meet up with Nate, Meri, Emerson and James as well as Renee, Stephen, Braiden, Maggie, Decker and Freya.  They have a bus that will take you back to the beginning of the trailhead and as we got on the driver asked if the kids liked the tunnels or bridges better.  All of them said the bridges.  We were up high enough that most of the smoke was pretty thin all day which was a blessing and another was that my time of the month was late and I didn't have to worry about it on the bike ride.  Tender mercies.

After lunch, Evelyn took a turn in the bike trailer.  She wanted to hold my camera, so I looped it around her neck and told her to put the cover down if the trail got too rocky.  This one of my Mom is the first one that she took. The next few are all my favorites from her perspective.

Seth and Evelyn took turns behind me.  Sometimes it was fun, others it was hard to have a copilot.  Seth liked trying to rock back and forth to see what was ahead.  He almost took us out completely twice when he jerked really hard.  Evelyn was my buddy through the first tunnel.  She came up with new lyrics to "Shut up and dance with me."  She kept singing, "Getting out of this tunnel is my destiny, ohhhhoh, Shut up and bike with me."  She just chatted and chatted every time she was with me.

I took this last one because of the wildflowers.  I don't have the picture, but Jer took a picture of my cousin Renee and I chatting while we biked.  I also really liked seeing Sam and my Dad chatting as they went.  I really like my new bike.  I can sit up easily and my hands don't fall asleep.  That was the main problem with the bike that I used all through my teenage years and the Germany 100k that I did with Janelle and my Ladwig cousins.  I got it last year for Mother's Day and then didn't really get to use it until recovering from this year's surgery.  It's a slightly downhill ride, so I thought it was going to be fairly easy and have a couple of coasting spots to rest legs with.... not so much.  I pedaled for all except one very short stretch.  It wasn't the hardest thing I've ever done, but it was harder than I thought it would be.  Ada had a good strategy though.  She was faster than Jer and I so she would get ahead to a shady spot and then rest in the shade until we caught up with her.