Are you of the Curious Sort?

On our trip to Seattle this afternoon/evening we first went to the waterfront. I wanted to take the boys to a funky touristy spot, The Ye Olde Curiousity Shop . This shop has been open for over 100 years and sells all kinds of tourist items - but the real appeal is all of the stuff that they have on display. It is sort of like a museum of oddities. They have two mummies, one male and one female, real amazon shrunken heads, large puffer fish, many stuffed animals - not of the cute cuddly kind but the real dead kind. Two headed calves and even a supposed mermaid. Their collections are not all weird, they also have a great collection of foreign coins that you can view and then there are all of the dollar bills folded into bow ties, shirts and flowers. It is a great place to visit, especially if you have teenage boys. Their website has photos of some of the curious oddities. If you visit Seattle, be sure to take in the waterfront area. The area includes the aquarium, Maritime Museum, many shops and eateries.

Our Summer's End Last Hurrah!

Over the weekend, our family was able to get away to Ocean Shores on the Washington coast. The weather was wonderful, sunny and in the 70s and we had the most relaxing time. There were walks on the beach, sand castle building, strange creature finding and go cart riding. It was especially wonderful because all of our family members were able to go. In this season of our lives, with older children working outside of the home, it can be very difficult to coordinate schedules.

This is a picture of the creature that our daughter found when digging the moat around her sand castle. We didn't know what it was, but have since discovered that it is a Pacific Mole Crab, and that it is considerably larger than the average Mole Crab.

Our trip gave us just the boost we needed to start on our busy fall season.

Guess Where We Went

Does it look like New Mexico or Arizona? Well, it is desert, but it is the actually in Canada and is the only desert in Canada. We celebrated our 27th Anniversary this month and took a trip to eastern Washington and then drove up into Canada to a city called Osoyoos, BC. The buildings in the picture are actually part of a resort built by the Okanagon indians from the area. The city is built in the middle of the desert, but there is a huge lake, Lake Osoyoos that has several resorts with beach front property. It is the place for those who love water recreation of many kinds. The area is also known for grapes and wineries. While we were in Osoyoos, we visited the Nk'Mip Desert Cultural Center. You start the tour with a visit into a small museum that has information about the original natives from the area and their history, from there you go outside where there are displays that give more information about the people and the animals from the area. There are trails through the desert, we took a short one that leads to replicas of the summer and winter homes that the original natives lived in. The whole center was very interesting and well worth the trip.

Train Trip

Hubby and I arrived home from our train trip on Sunday evening. We had a wonderful and relaxing time. Our trip took us to Portland, Oregon. We arrived on Saturday afternoon, checked into our hotel, walked to a local restaurant for a nice seafood dinner, went to Lloyds Center Mall and walked around and then saw a movie. We ended the day having desert in our room. The next day we enjoyed a delicious breakfast at the hotel restaurant and then just putzed around in the park across the street and at the mall before our train was set to leave. We arrived home in the evening. It was a short but nice trip. It was great traveling by train because we could both visit without having to worry about traffic and paying attention to the road - definately worth doing again sometime when we have more time to see the sights.

Cataldo Mission - Idaho

On our way home from Montana, we stopped at Cataldo Mission State Park. We have driven past is so many times on our way to from other places and never stopped. I was driving and decided it was time to take a break. This mission is the oldest building in Idaho. It was a worthwhile stop and now my curiousity is satisfied.

We toured part of Yellowstone National Park on our free day at camp. We were able to visit Mammoth Hot Springs, the Norris area where Steamboat Geyser is, and the Canyon area. After leaving the Canyon area, we were supposed to head north back to camp. I got us twisted around and we went south instead, but because of the mistake we got to see a great heard of bison.




This is a near arial view of Yellowstone Bible camp. I say near, because it is actually taken from what is called T-shirt mountain. Some of the men, boys and girls climbed this mountain and at the top there are T-shirts that they can sign. Our older two boys really enjoyed this challenge. This was a great vacation.

We're Home

We arrived home from our trip on Sunday evening. After our stop at Glacier National Park, we went for a week to Yellowstone Bible Camp in Pray, MT. It was a family camp and consisted mostly of homeschooled families. Some of which we know from here in the Pacific NW and some of which were new to us. There were just over 60 in attendance of ages 2-87. There was tasty food, great fellowship and also many great lessons on family and relationships. The schedule includes lessons in the morning after breakfast and then again in the evening after dinner. We had free time in the afternoon and then a free day on Thursday. We used our free day to travel into Yellowstone National Park and had a wonderful time there viewing the great scenery that God created along with many different forms of wildlife. (I will post pics. soon). We arrived home tired but grateful for the time we had. On Monday, I needed to go to the store and decided to take our suburban, so I could gas it up after the long trip. Well . . . it died in the left turn lane in traffic. Turns out that the alternator gave up the ghost. Thankfully, it waited until we got home instead of somewhere on our 500 mile drive home. God is so good!

Fire around Glacier National Park

There is a fire burning on the east side of Glacier Park and at one point the Going to the Sun Road was closed halfway up. We were concerned that we might not be able to get across the park and make it to where we had a motel reserved. Well, they got the fire somewhat under control and the roads opened so we made it through. I took a couple of pictures - one of the smoke from the fire, it is taken from an overlook near Lake St. Mary, and the second of some of the devestation that the fire caused. We saw lots of charred trees and even some flames in the top of a tree, it was a terrible and sad sight.

Wildlife at Glacier National Park

Click to enlarge the images, it was if these two were posing for us.

Hidden Lake Nature Trail at Glacier National Park

More Images of Glacier National Park

We enjoyed seeing the Red Tour Buses that operate in the park and couldn't help taking pictures of them. I am including one of a bus going through one of the tunnels in the park. There are also many wildflowers in the alpine areas and I am partial to them so I am including one or two pictures of them too.

Glacier National Park

Yesterday we drove from Missoula up to West Glacier and then on into Glacier National Park. It took us a lot longer to drive up than we thought because there was much road construction. After we went into the park we had a picnic lunch at the Apgar picnic area. It was very pretty there on the end of Lake McDonald. The weather was warm and sunny. We spent the afternoon and early evening driving around in the west side of the park. We stopped at McDonald Lodge and walked through - it is very old and beautiful with log beams and a gianormous fireplace. Today we got up and drove across the rest of the park, we took our time and stopped many places along the way. I have a flair up of bursitis in my knee right now and so we could not do as much hiking or even walking as we would normally do. We did stop at Logan Pass Visitor Center and do a 3 mile hike up to Hidden Lake. I am sure I will pay for that later. We did get to see mountain goats, bighorn sheep, hairy marmots, ground squirrels, and chipmunks during this visit. This visit to Glacier was time well spent.

We're off

It may be quiet around here (nothing new) but we will be off in the morning, heading to Montana. We will be spending a couple of days in Glacier National Park and then travelling on to bible camp near Yellowstone. Dear friends of ours will be at camp with us and it should be a great time! I'll post pictures when we get home.

At the sculpture park. Me clanging a gong. There were a few bells/gongs throughout the park and I gonged every one of them.


The marina in Roche Harbor.

The garden in the English Camp



Hubby in the garden and
The Historic Hotel in Roche Harbor.



The Lime Kiln Lighthouse.

Just a few of the pictures from our wonderful trip.

San Juans in September

We decided to take advantage of hubby's extra free time and take our anniversary trip to the San Juan Islands. We stayed two nights in Friday Harbor in a very nice Bed and Breakfast. The house was built in 1907 and since converted over to a B&B. Our room had period furniture and a native american flair, it also had a fireplace and huge jacuzzi tub. The breakfasts were scrumptious. The weather was beautifully sunny and in the low 70s. We toured a neat sculpture garden that had trails through meadows & forest with different sculptures at places along the way. This was like a nature walk and art appreciation all at once. We went into the little village of Roche Harbor which features a historic hotel that was established in 1886. The hotel had a beautiful garden and the view of the harbor was pretty. We went to the British Camp and the American Camp that were established during a dispute over who owned the islands - a war was almost started over an American settler shooting a British settler's pig. We also went out to the Lime Kiln Pt. State Park and watched for whales - we didn't see any, but we had a nice picnic lunch there. We toured the island, walked a lot, ate out and relaxed. It was a great way to let the anxieties of life drift away. This trip was provided by very generous family and friends. We truly count ourselves very fortunate to have been blessed in this way. I will post some pictures from our trip in a separate post.

One Last Hurrah!

Above are pictures of a view from Hurricane Ridge and a deer that came into the picnic area while we were eating lunch.

The woods, children and tents - what do they all have in common? Camping in the Olympic National Park! We just got back from a wonderful camping trip with several of our dear friends. We all went over to the Olympic National Park and camped in the Heart O' the Hill's campground at the foot of Hurricane Ridge. The children put on cammo and grabbed wooden guns and ran around in the woods playing army. They had a blast. We went on short day hikes, up at the ridge where the views are spectacular, and in the campground through the woods. One family went on a long walk (about 12 miles) on the beach at the Dungeness Spit all the way out to the lighthouse and back. We had wonderful fellowship and a very relaxing time. We also had our worship service in the campground, there is something about worshipping the Creator amongst his beautiful creation that is so special. Most of us went over on Thursday and came back on Sunday and thankfully the rain held off until we were all packed up on Sunday afternoon. My boys are rating this trip as one of the best they have ever been on and I would have to agree.

Spokane

We went on our first camping trip of the summer this past weekend. We camped at Riverside State Park in Spokane. The weather was wonderfully warm and dry. The park is nice and has many bike trails near by. The photo on the upper left is of the Pitcher and Bowl rock formation - do you see it? The photo on the upper right is of the swinging bridge. We went bike riding and sight seeing around Spokane. We visited the Historic Campbell House and the Japanese Garden in Manito Park. It was a great mini-vacation.