Shake down #2

We hiked up Green Mountain this evening with these lovely ladies.  I think we are good to go to Buckhorn in two weeks. 

Shake down #1

This was our first hike before we go on our big one at the end of the month with the young women.  These are some awesome young ladies and they are lots of fun to be around.  They all did great on this 6 mile round trip hike to Lena Lake.  The adults did okay too.  Ha ha! We even got them home on time at 10:30 pm.  

L to R  Bryanna, Leslie, Alejandra, Sadie, Jenette, Krystal, Brittany, McKenna, and Arynne

voyage number 4

We are off to our annual Blake Island canoe trip.

There was rough waters on the way to the Island.  It took us over an hour to get there which is very unusual.  

Sadie bought her own Cheez it's and Elijah refused to let her have any once he got the box in his hands.  

I called yesterday morning before we left to make sure we were okay to have charcoal.  They reassured me that the burn ban was only for fires and that he doubted it would change any time soon.  So I planned accordingly to have tin foil dinners and use charcoal to cook them.  The second we touched foot on the island the ranger was right there telling all that we could only have propane/gas stoves to cook with as of that day.  GRRRRR and more GRRRRRR, you have got to be kidding me!  It was crazy that they don't give any notice about this change.  Most places it seems will give a day or two notice so you can plan for it.  Nathan tried to convince them to let us use charcoal for night since the ban was changed at last minute but they weren't going to budge.  Luckily Nathan brought penny stoves or we would have had to paddle back and not stay the night.   

I was not impressed with the ranger.  He was creepy and seemed to come by every half hour through camp all night long up till after one in the morning.   The only reason I say he seemed creepy is that he seemed to show up as you rounded the corner from the bathroom.  He never had a flash light so it seemed like he didn't want to be noticed even though I said hi to him each time I saw him.  I had a hard time falling asleep with him wandering around continuously unnecessarily.   Although Nathan probably made him suspicious of us because he was standing his ground for a bit about the sudden change in the burn ban.  Other than that issue we had a great time.

Elijah: Are we going to start the fire? 

Me: No we can't

Elijah: Yes we can see (pointing to the fire pit) its right here.

Me: Yeah you can go explain that to the ranger.

Crazy kids

This is one of the hills they love to climb up and slide down.  It makes for some pretty dirty kids.  

There is an eagle in this tree.

Stuck in the sand

Jumping over sand castle with the sun going down

This was an awesome sunset with the Olympics.  Notice picture below.  The arrow is pointed to the peak that Nathan and I will be taking the young women to at the end of July.  It was fun to be able to see the peak and that the sun set directly behind it illuminating it.  

I was going to photo shop a shark behind them but I really want my family to not be afraid to take the trip to Blake Island with us in a couple of weeks.  

Ha! Ranger man we could still roast our marsh mellows.  

There were so many boats around the island

Jarom's selfie.  This makes me smile because this is his personality.  

Elijah's violin

Josiah built a dragon

The tide came quickly and destroyed the dragon

Kelp carpet.  You know you want this in your house, Melissa!

I clicked this picture and thought I had my camera safely in pocket.  However, once I got out of the canoe it promptly landed in the water.  URGH!  I am not sure the camera will fair well with salt water in it.  We will see if I can post any more pictures on this blog for a while.  The whole entire trip it was okay in the plastic bag in my pocket.  

Big drink of water

This is proof of how hot it is when you have to resort to a bucket for drinking.  

Narrows bridge

As we were heading away from the spray park on to the freeway back home I noticed this view on my left side.  (although if you look up Galloping Gertie online it wasn't such a beautiful site then)

Every time we drive across this bridge we comment on how fun it would be to walk across it.   I turned around so we could park and go across.  The older boys were not happy.  Jarom's response "why did you have to see the stupid scenery".   They were tired and hot from playing at the park but we couldn't pass it up since we were so close to the bike/walk path to the bridge.  Those are the Olympic mountains in the back ground.  I love those mountains.  

Sadie, Elijah and I walked happily on the path.

It was a good walk. 

Yes that would be Josiah and Jarom refusing to make this fun in any way.  They were not going to walk on that bridge no matter what.  I think once they saw these pictures they were sorry they hadn't   but they won't tell you that.  

It was a cool view of the train and water below.  It was worth the walk.

On the way back it was hotter than heck.  I am not sure why the temperature changed so drastically but we wished that our water bottles were with us and not in van.  Elijah did get packed for a bit to give him a break.  

Josiah and Jarom making their way slowing back up to the van.  It was a long hot walk back to the car.

Spray Park

We happened to be near this spray park in Tacoma today.  We had a great time.  It has been so hot it was refreshing for me to get a little wet too.  

Elijah is quite the social bug lately.  There were several times when he was on this rock that several other kids were there and he would be conversing away and laughing with them.  I didn't get a picture of it. 

AHH nothing like having water hit your back continuously.  

Elijah didn't like the bright sun on his face.  

Sadie hiding from Josiah.  They had a great game of tag going.

Kids family meeting?  I suspect they were discussing how they would get me wet.

Menu plan with Young Women

These are some of our awesome young women.  Nathan and I get the privilege to go on another back packing adventure with them in late July.   Tonight we planned our menu for that big hike and went on a short hike at a state park nearby.   We have a fantastic menu planned.  

Bryanna, Krystal, Brittany, McKenna, Sadie, and Arynne