One of the perks of being married to a teacher is that we have summer vacations! For our first we took on the craziest of a month-long road trip. Our primary motivation was to see family, but Charles took the opportunity to call it a tax write-off because he happens to teach geography and we took lots of photos for him to use in his classes.
We started Memorial weekend and got back at the end of June. Somehow we survived in our little blue Buick with two babies and no A/C. Wow.
Memorial Day was spent with Charles' dad in Nampa, ID before we headed up to Ephrata, WA to see my family, including my return-missionary sister and soon-to-be missionary brother. (I wrote about them here.)
The (visually) fun part started when we headed over to Lummi Island, WA to see Charles' uncle who basically paid for our honeymoon because he hadn't been able to come to our wedding.
There was no bridge to the island, but we were lucky in that we got to the ferry right on time. It seems that this was Charles' first time on an island. We could see Canada from the island as well.
First we got to see Uncle Klay's property. He showed us this really old tree and mentioned how it likely was part of the Native American burial tradition of tying the deceased to the base of the tree so their spirit could soak into the wood. Needless to say, they stopped doing that when the White Men came around.
Then he took us down to the beach that was basically just across the street. Most of it was a cobble beach rather than sandstone. I didn't get a picture of that because of the unstable footing. I was focused more on staying upright with a baby strapped to me at the time. But the part with tidal pools was a sandstone beach. As a geologist, Klay was able to explain how we were able to see the strata in the stone. It was cool, but I'm not a geologist to be able to explain it here.
We didn't stay for very long because we had our hotel in Oregon already reserved and needed to get there at a decent bedtime.
The nest day our big event was going to the Devils Punch Bowl beach. This was probably my favorite part of the trip.
The water was a bit cold, which would normally be a huge turn-off for me, but we were still able to get our feet wet and the cliffs were fascinating to me. Plus, I could watch waves all day and be happy.
Our first day in California we were able to hit one of the big redwoods and drive through San Francisco before we got to our hotel in Anaheim. That was our last long day of driving.
I got the best souvenir that day: a baby redwood tree. Unfortunately, it didn't like coming home from Arizona and kinda died. Fortunately it came with a guarantee that we were able to call in and now I have a redwood sapling coming to me.
We didn't stop in San Francisco at all, but we were fascinated by the detail in the architecture that we were able to see with just driving through. And it reminded us that we would like to see an opera at some point.
You'd think that with staying in Anaheim, we should have gone to Disneyland, and I will say that we did think about it and made the appropriate reservation and had space for one day doing that planned. But then we decided that Jon is too little to remember and so we decided to wait on that. Honestly, we were happy just having a day off from driving instead. That was Thursday.
Friday we went to the aquarium in Monterey which was probably the boys' favorite day.
We were greeted with a tube of tiny, translucent jellyfish. I tried circling them in the picture. Hopefully that makes it easier to see. Jon loved seeing all the fish and animals as well as all the interactive areas. We spent a very happy three hours in there.
Next was Vegas! We only walked the part of the Strip that I care about: Paris and the Bellagio.
I love all things French and we would've actually stayed in Paris, but our plan got shifted enough so when we went to shift our reservation they didn't have an opening. Next time. C'est la vie.
I also love the fountain show at the Bellagio and our timing was such that we got to see two, bracketing our time inside. I had to see the glass flowers on the ceiling, the conservatory echoed our time at the aquarium, and we had to get some gelato.
We went to the zoo in Phoenix. Jon loved seeing more animals and it was exciting to have the lion roar while were there and the alligators were being quite active too. Then we saw the San Xavier Mission down by Tucson. It was my first time at a Catholic mission, so it was interesting seeing all the carvings inside. Charles enjoyed learning about this oldest mission in the area. It is the oldest because it was built using more native techniques so it has withstood the elements better than the others have.
On our way home we stopped by the Montezuma Castle National Park. It was very interesting and I wish we could've stayed a bit longer to learn more about it, but it was hot. This was the Monday after the the fourth hottest day on record in Phoenix, so we didn't want to stay outside for very long.
From there it was just a straight shot up through Utah to get home.
We basically just flew up the state, but we were still able to appreciate the geology and all the texture there. I also didn't know that the Manti Temple was just there by the road so you couldn't miss it. The Manti Temple is also one of my favorite "castle" temples.
But our favorite site by far was when we came out of Logan Canyon and could see all of Bear Lake.
Montpelier is just out of frame there to the left. So we still had another hour of driving to get home because of all the little lake towns we had to drive through. But now we are home...for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment