Summer Vacation 2003 - Washington, Oregon, Northern California

As the kids were growing up, we made it a point to take summer vacations, and given the number of people, it was usually a road trip.  We frequently traveled long distances, so we had plenty of time in the car.  One popular activity was keeping a journal of our trips.  I found this while cleaning out some boxes late last year.  It contains our road trip to Oregon.

I apologize for the lack of resolution in some of the pictures, the scanner had difficulties with some colors.  And I made the images pretty big so that there's a chance you can read them. 

This was also the trip where one of my favorite pictures was taken. 

Requim for a Tree

Earlier this week, a storm in Northern California blew down a tree in Calaveras Big Trees State Park.  (Drive-Through Tree Felled by Winter Storm)  In 2009, we took a vacation to the Sierra Nevada's and happened to stay at Angel's Camp. 

One of the days, we visited Calaveras Big Trees State Park, and found the famous Drive-Through Tree.  Although you could not drive through the tree anymore, just standing inside the tree was pretty impressive. 

Although cutting a hole through the tree probably hastened it's demise, I don't judge those who did it.  Death is just another part of the cycle of life.  The remains of the tree will decompose and become nutrients to the next generation of Sequoias.  

Favorite Pictures: Daughters on Sea Lion Statue

In 2003, we traveled down to Arcata, California for summer vacation.  We spent much of the time driving along the coast in Oregon and Northern California.  Along the way, we stopped at Sea Lion Caves in Florence, Oregon.  We saw this statue, Stellar Sea Lion Family, and decided we needed to have a family picture as well.  

Camper

When we were in St. Louis, we frequently went camping with our friends from church, Dan and Donna.  Their daughter, Rachel, was about the same age as our oldest two and they all loved to have little sleepouts in their camper. 

A few years later, Dan called us up and asked us if we wanted to buy the camper.  We agreed, and we then began dragging the kids around the country in the camper.  It went with us to Yellowstone, Glacier, Utah, Oregon, California, and many places between.  The most notable was 15-days straight when we were moving from Iowa to Washington (via the Grand Canyon). 

Now it's primarily used once or maybe twice a year.  It makes a great shelf in the garage.  This year, I had 4 days off around the 4th of July holiday, so we went camping near Mount Rainier. Deanne was able to come, and Maria and Chris came up from Oregon to visit for a bit.  It's showing its age, and there are fewer parts than there used to be, but we still enjoy getting out in the "wild". 

Whitewater Rafting

Payette River - 2004

The middle squares of my t-shirt quilt are from whitewater rafting companies.  I first went rafting the week before final exams my senior year in college on the Lower Gauley River in West Virginia.  The remnants of a hurricane came through the week before and the water was running high.  I figured if I was going to die, I might as well do it before I had to take my finals.   It was a blast, and after that, I was hooked.

On our honeymoon, we had been going for a week straight when we got to Moab, Utah and we were beat.  We decided to spend a day and floated down the Colorado (which is actually pretty tame there).

When my daughters got older, I introduced the oldest two to rafting in the middle fork of the Flathead River in Montana.  A couple of years later, the whole family rafted down the Arkansas river in Colorado.  Gail spent the entire trip hanging onto the 8-year old Deanne, who would have fallen out multiple times otherwise.  We rafted the Payette River in Idaho, the Nooksack in Washington, but the most adventurous was a midnight raft trip down the Manatuska River in Alaska in July.  We had dry suits for that one, since the river begins from a glacier.

For our 30th Anniversary, we had a float trip down the Merced River in Yosemite, and a few years later, we channeled our inner Burt Reynolds by rafting the Chattooga River in Georgia, the filming site of Deliverance.

The white t-shirt on the quilt says it all. 

 It was once believed that the Earth was flat.  

And if you went too far you'd fall off the edge. 

  Cool! 

Deanne

I like the woody taste.

Deanne was born a few months shy of three years after Valerie. With the experience with Valerie's labor, we didn't know what to expect.  Luckily, this one was more like the first two. 

Contractions started in the afternoon on a Wednesday during Advent.  A friend from church had just died, and I needed to practice singing Amazing Grace at her funeral.  The organist and I planned on meeting before church and going through it.  The contractions weren't too bad yet, so Gail said to go ahead and we would head to the hospital after practice.

So, we dropped the kids off at a neighbors and headed to church.  As I practice, the contractions started getting harder.  It was a bit disconcerning to the members coming for service to see Gail in the office in labor.  I never really lived that one down.

After we practiced, we headed off to the hospital and voila, another girl.  I was actually thankful it was a girl, since raising a boy with three older sisters would probably permanently scar him.

That evening, I went to the neighbors to pick up the older girls and I found that they had been throwing up all evening.  I sat with Valerie on my lap, something which brought out the jealousy in Corinne.  I still hear about that from Corinne when the subject comes up.

While we were pregnant, one of Gail's friends wrote us a letter indicating that all of our kids (to date) had names that started with a roman numeral, and asked us if we were going to continue the trend.  Once we were aware of the pattern, we had to continue it.  Xanthippe and Imogene were ruled out, so we settled on Deanne.   Something her Oma still has trouble pronouncing.