Summer Road Trip

More than a month has gone by since returning from our road trip and I definitely have to make a blog about it.  This was a new experience for me.  My idea of a vacation is to plot and plan for months prior and have everything figured out as to where, when & how.  After all, that is part of the fun, the anticipation that comes with the planning.  This trip was definitely more in the vein of David's kind of vacation - more spontaneous and take it one day at a time and see where it leads you, with nothing set in stone.  And I have to say, I quite enjoyed it.

Dave purchased a truck on auction out of Yakima, WA.  He had to pick it up within a certain time frame that made it fall right while I was away at YW girls' camp.  He really wanted to do more than just pick up the truck.  He wanted us to have some time away together.  We've both been so busy with our church callings, jobs, life in general that we were missing time together.  So he flew up while I was at girls' camp, picked up the truck, did a few minor repairs, hung out in Seattle a day and then I met up with him the following Saturday for a five day road trip down the Pacific coast and back home.

Sweet man that he is, he took 3 dozen yellow roses (my mother's favorite flower) to my mother's grave for me since he had the time and I wouldn't.  Hopefully I will get a picture posted here once I can figure out how to get it off the cell phone.

After meeting the host family that took care of him while he was up there, the lovely hispanic family of a good friend of David's, we headed out.

We got started later than I had anticipated and my goal (see just had to sneak in a little advanced planning and schedule) was for us to make it to Tillamook, Oregon.  After all, the Tillamook cheese factory, we learned, is the second most visited tourist attraction in all of Oregon.  What?  A cheese factory that popular?  Who would have thunk it?

But since Dave is more of a stop when the urge takes you kind of guy, we made slow progress.  Here are some of the distractions -

 A bridge section out in the middle of the water... why?  

 Some great yard art if you love fishing

 Dave enjoying the journey... a road side eatery

 This docked boat was surrounded by bleached oyster shells by the boatload

Some NW alaskan-esque art work

We made it to Tillamook 20 minutes before the factory was to close and this was Saturday, which meant we HAD to do it then or never since we could not waste a day not traveling at all.  I wasn't about to be that close and not go!  I had been dreaming all day of a Tillamook ice cream cone! We didn't do the tour but we did make sure we hit the factory store and I did get my ice cream.  It was delicioso!  We also got to sample cheese and bought some smoked cheddar and swiss cheese packages to take home.  Did you know they did fudge as well?  We bought some raspberry white chocolate fudge.  It was good, but the almond joy fudge outshone it and after tasting that, the raspberry white chocolate couldn't hold a candle to it.  We nibbled on fudge the rest of the trip (I was determined not to put on weight so I was very proud of my self-control).

The next day we attended church in Tillamook before heading out.  The members there indicated they were in the middle of a heat wave - mid 70's!  Wow, we were loving it.  So much better than the 100+ temps we knew Utah was having at the time and mid 70's was perfect!

We had a very leisurely drive Sunday and didn't make a lot of mileage.  We had to keep pulling off the road to take photos of the awesome coast and ocean views.  We couldn't get enough of it.  Here are som samples of what we got to see & enjoy.

We stopped at one beach and Dave pulled out the kites he had managed to purchase at a garage sale he had visited while in Seattle.  The beach is the perfect place to fly kites, the wind is pretty much always blowing.  We saw tidepools and harbor seals, but not the pod of grey whales we had heard makes their home at Depoe Bay.  We spent the night in Newport, Oregon.

 Gorgeous photo of one of the tidepools we saw

Monday we visited Seal Rock, which was great.  The only problem... we saw no seals.  The fog had come in and we arrived early in the morning (9 am).  I imagine afternoon hours are better when the fog has lifted and the seals are snoozing & sunning themselves.  We had a good time exploring and taking photos at least.

 Here is where the seals should have been, but not a one was in sight.

 Exploring at the Seal Rock site.  I am on the back side of the huge rock you see in the photo below.

This photo shows well how much fog was on the coast when we stopped at Seal Rock.

We hit Florence, Oregon about lunch time and we finally had the chance to dine at Mo's Seafood restaurant.  Signs are plentiful along the roadway advertising Mo's.  We decided to give them a try.  What a great decision that was!  Move over Ivar's, Mo's has won my heart!  We had the most incredible smoked salmon fetticine alfredo dish, along with some clam chowder.  For days, we couldn't stop remarking on how wonderful that meal was.  We would go back to the Oregon coast, just to eat a meal at Mo's.

View from our table at Mo's.  One of the many bridges found in western Oregon.

In Florence, we also did some souvenir shopping as well.  We continued down the coast, drinking in the gorgeous sight.

 The only lighthouse we had the chance to see along the coast, but there are many.

 That is a petrified whale jaw bone Dave is leaning on.  Kinda helps you visualize how Jonah could spend some intimate time with a whale/big fish, huh?

We both definitely want to do a coastal Oregon trip again.  It made me wish we could have spent our honeymoon there rather than at Lava Hot Springs, ID.  We made it down to Crescent City, CA by Monday night.  There we saw a sight you wouldn't plan on seeing no matter how much effort in advance planning you made.  A dead, young female whale that had beached there in town.  The whole town was talking about it.  Apparently, that is not the norm for them.  We took a little hike down to the beach and saw it.  It had been there for about a week, so it looked like a deflated whale.  It made me think of those gag rubber chickens.  All skin and no flesh/muscle.  It had bleached from the sun as well.  I'll see if I can post the photos we took of that as well.  I don't know how to post from Dave's cell phone as well as from mine.

Tuesday it was good bye to the coast and hello redwoods, but not before we took one last short hike down from the highway to the beach for one last attempt to see some tide pool wonders, but our timing was off again.  The tide was not far enough out but the hike had it's own wonders, mostly to David.  He took many photos of slugs and bugs.  The windblown trees were unique and interesting and we caught a glimpse of some wild rabbits.

 The hike had us going down to the beach so this is a view at the beginning, down to our destination.

The trees were all windblown, which meant the branches leaned against the hillside.  Here was a natural tunnel made form the tree branches.

We drove through Redwood National Park.  Sorry, Redwood NP, but you did not steal my heart.  Sequoia National Park close to Fresno by far is more impressive.  We still enjoyed the giant trees and had the chance to see my elk and deer wondering through the area.

We continued down highway 101 until just before Ukiah and then headed east driving around Lake Lucerne.  Our goal was to hit Auburn that night and see a former college roommate of mine, Carlene Edmond, whom I hadn't seen in years.  As soon as we left the coast, the temperatures went up dramatically and by the time we hit Auburn they were having 108 degree weather.  Oh, how we missed the Oregon coast!

We managed to hook up with Carlene, although I think Dave managed to take the most round about way possible.  We got there much later than we had hoped, but still took her out to dinner and ordered way too much Chinese food for the 3 of us.  I think she was probably eating left overs for a couple of days after we left.  It was good to see her and catch up on what has been happening in our lives.

The last day of our trip, Wednesday was pretty much a driving day.  We did stop at Truckee and visited the monument to the Donner party.  Dave's ancestors helped rescue the Donner party.  We had hoped to see if they were mentioned at the visitor center, but again our timing was off.  We were too early and they hadn't opened yet.  Again, we couldn't wait around or it would have made for a VERY long day.

This monument to the Donner Party was built at the height the snow was at when the Donner's were stranded.

We stopped and had breakfast in Reno, but the rest of the way was drive, drive, drive.  Not much to see along I-80 through Nevada anyway.  I read outloud the sequel to the Hunger Games, Catching Fire, to David as he had not read it yet.  He did let me do a little bit of driving during this trip, but by far he did the bulk of the driving.

We had a great time and it has planted in Dave the idea that this might be the way we want to spend our winters in our retirement - away form the snow and cold of Utah, on a two month road trip to warmer climes, exploring the great outdoors.  Aw, now doesn't that sound enticing??

June 2013 - What a fun month!

So summer is half over now that we have passed the fourth of July and this post is not about July at all, only about June.  It will be by far the busiest month of summer we will have.  In fact, the rest of summer doesn't have much planned in it at all.  So it's a good thing June turned out to be so fun.  Here are the highlights.

Stake Pioneer Trek - June 13-15

This was our second trek together.  The first one was four years ago when we were still newlyweds and newbies in our ward and stake.  This time we knew a lot more people and this time Dave was asked to serve as the head medical personnel and he was in charge of coordinating things with his team of 4 other people.  He didn't end up working nearly as hard as 4 years ago.  I think he actually got to enjoy this trek more rather than just work his tail off dealing with medical issues.

It was a shorter trek this time, only 3 days, Thurs, Fri & Saturday.  It was shorter distances to walk each day.  The maximum miles were 7 on two of the days and one day, Friday was only 3 miles.  It was in Wyoming but not as far away, just a bit past Evanston.  Part of the trail was on the authentic Mormon trail and the first night we camped at an actual campsite used by the pioneers so there was still some good history involved.  The amount of youth attending was smaller, not nearly as big of a group, but there were some tried and true experiences that all treks have in common.

There was plenty of wind & dirt/dust.  That was probably one of the things that irritated me the most and I had to work on not letting that get in the way of enjoying my experience.  The constant wind chapped my lips and blew dirt everywhere.  I soon understood way they said not to bring or plan on wearing contacts.  So many times my glasses were covered in a heavy coating of dust so bad that it didn't pay to even wear them since I couldn't see a thing through the dust.  The wind was so strong that it tore through our straw hats and damaged them so much that by the end of trek we just tossed them in the garbage.  It also made wearing an apron useless as the wind just whipped it up and out and it became such a nuisance that I quit wearing one.  On the positive side, the wind help keep the temperatures cooler.

Speaking of temperatures...since we went early in the summer, June 13-15, it still got very cold at night.  We knew it would, but I don't think we realized how cold.  Luckily we only had two nights to sleep over.  The last night was terribly cold.  We were bundled up in multiple layers and still froze. There was frost on the ground when we first got up.  I guess it makes the experience a bit more authentic.  Luckily as soon as the sun came up, it wasn't long before things warmed up.

Needless to say we did not sleep well either night, but still had to trek during the day.  This made the experience seem more exhausting than the last one even though we did much shorter distances. Not to mention that this time we were 4 years older.  But that couldn't be the reason it was more physically challenging this time could it??

I don't have any photos to post since they have not distributed the CD with the official stake photos.  We didn't bring a camera ourselves because they have a gentleman come along who all he does is take photos and he takes tons of them.  Then he compiles a CD and they burn a copy for each participant to have.  Once we get that I'll have to post some.

The spirit was stronger this time around I think.  The women's pull was longer (1.5 miles) and challenging.  Our handcart family only had two petite girls and myself to do the pull.  I put the two girls up front to pull and I pushed from behind.  Our other female adult leader had been chosen to "die" on the trail.  She was waiting for us towards the top of the last big rise we had to go up.  She joined the two girls up front and helped pull us up the rest of the way.  It was a good thing because I was about spent by the time I had gotten to that point and was a bit worried if I could hold out to the end.  The boys joined even further up the hill and I was more than happy to let them take over from there.  The devotional they held afterwards was very poignant and the spirit was strong.

So was the two evening firesides.  The first evening we had "visitors" from the past.  One leader dressed up as Ephraim Hanks and told his story.  A female leader dressed up as Ephraim Hanks' wife and she told her story.  They both did a great job portraying these two individuals and it was very inspiring.  The second night, President Allred invited all 7 bishops to come up and extend an invitation to the youth to come see them personally if they needed to work through the repentance process.  It was a long presentation but very touching and powerful to hear the bishops plead with the youth to come set their lives in order  How I wish Spencer had been there to hear it!

We were part of a great handcart family.  Our group testimony meeting went very well.  Each youth wasn't afraid to bear their testimony and we had two less active kids as part of our group, yet the spirit was there as they shared their feelings.  I was very impressed at how well they all got along and worked together.  Our stake has a goal to create Zion within the stake.  I felt the youth in our little family did just that for the 3 days we were together.  They served one another, they treated each other with respect and concern and they were obedient to the rules.  It was a privilege to be with them.

Our family members were:  Rachel as our "ma" and Joseph as our "pa".  Grandparents were Rory & Nichole Schaefer.  We were the aunt and uncle.  Dave was called Uncle D and I was called Auntie Cindy.  Our kids were Cameron Lee (he was such a crack up and fun kid.  You can see him behind the flag in the photo posted below), Pablo Curtis (he is in our ward and he was quite the singer on the trail), Kinsen (he was one of the less active kids, yet I saw him reading his scriptures every day during the trek), and Adrianna (she comes from a less active family but had a sweet spirit with her).  We picked the family name Walkers.  I do have a photo of our family flag so I can post that.

I had the assignment to design it once the group decided they wanted to do a shield emblem and what we wanted our symbols to be.  The theme of trek was "Walk with Me" so I guess Walkers for a family name made sense.



Strawberry Days - Berried Treasure - June 17-22

Pleasant Grove always holds their city festival in June and it is called Strawberry Days, with this year's theme being Berried Treasure, a play on the pirate theme.  It started up the very next week after trek.  We don't go to a lot of the activities but our ward is heavily involved in volunteering and helping get things done.  My visiting teaching partner is on the planning committee and is the head of the volunteers.  So to support her, every night but one, I went after work to the Lion's Club where topping strawberries was going on and spent a couple of hours each night cutting the green parts off the strawberries so they would be ready to slice and serve with cream.  That is a staple food commodity during the festival - strawberries and cream (delicious by the way).  Donna also got into the civic spirit and came multiple nights as well.  It was amazing how many flats of strawberries were prepared each night.  It is safe to say a lot of strawberries are consumed that week in Pleasant Grove.

They also hold a rodeo 3 nights, Thurs, Fri & Sat. that is a big draw.  People come from all over to attend.  Well they sell concessions to help raise funds.  Another person in our ward is over that committee so a lot of ward members will sign up to help man the concession stands those nights.  We took our turn on Saturday night, the final night of the rodeo.  That was one intense experience.  From the time they opened at 6:30 pm until our shift ended at 9:00 pm (which is actually 30 minutes past the scheduled shift end) we didn't have a moments rest and we worked at a high rate of speed doing whatever we were assigned to do.  Dave was put on the grill and cooked hamburgers and hot dogs all night long.  I worked on the assemble of the hot dogs/hamburgers.  We made sure the buns were laid out and the meat put in them and then stuffed into a paper sleeve to hold them.  We also had to add cheese to make cheeseburgers as well.  It was non-stop work at a frantic pace the whole time we were there.  So strawberries aren't the only thing consumed in large quantities that week either!

It's fun to be part of the community and help out.  To feel the community spirit and see people come together for a good cause is great.


Girls Camp - June 24-27

This year camp was done on a ward level.  It wasn't much of a "camping experience" since we went down to Ephraim and stayed in a house that is owned by the parents of one of the leaders.  The girls had a good time and there were some good experiences planned.  The theme was Heroes and each girl had made a cape and decorated it to represent a person they had picked to be their hero.  Most picked family members they were familiar with.  I was under the impression it had to be a scripture hero so I picked Ester.  Here is a picture of my cape.

The motto is in the small square with a picture of Manti Temple below it and Girls Camp 2013 underneath the temple.  Ester's crown has colored jewels representing the values I though Ester demonstrated - purple for integrity, white for faith, blue for divine nature, red for individual worth & yellow for good works.  The column the crown is one represents standing firm and alone and I put gold lines on it for virtue.

The motto was Dare to Stand Alone and they based it off of a talk by Pres. Thomas S Monson where he uses a poem that went "Dare to be a Mormon.  Dare to Stand Alone.  Dare to have a purpose firm.  Dare to make it known." and each day one of the phrases was presented and discussed.  It was good.

The girls spent one day doing certification activities ( and some had been done prior to camp) and the rest of the time we did some great activities.  One day was pretty strenuous physically.  The hike was a challenge, quite steep and long.  They were supposed to be able to explore a cave, but when we got there the rope that was supposed to be at the entrance that would allow you to enter was gone so we didn't get to do that.  But the view from the top of the mountain was spectacular and well worth the climb.  After getting back down off the mountain we went to a place and did rock climbing.  That was quite challenging physically as well.  Some of the girls were like mountain goats and just scurried up the rock.  They made it look easy.  I learned that rock climbing is not my forte.  I struggled.  It took me two tries and then I only got up about 1/3 of the way to the top.  One of my little beehive girls, Jace Rasmussen, struggled as well, but she was tenacious and wouldn't quit trying.  I was very impressed with her persistence.

The girls were able to attend the Manti Pageant one night and also do baptisms for the dead at the temple early the next morning.  They had been encouraged to bring family names.  I had my fourth great grandmother's name, Rebecca Gray, that dad had given to me some time ago that needed the baptism done so I brought her name along.  I was the only leader that did baptisms.  It had been a long time since doing baptisms for the dead so it was a special experience made even more special because I had a direct ancestor who I was able to serve by doing the ordinances.

One afternoon was spent at a lake at Palisade Park.  It is within 30 minutes from Ephraim.  It was quite fun and I got lots of sun helping establish a good suntan for the rest of the summer.  We rented a paddle boat and a canoe and the girls had a great time doing that activity as well as swimming and/or lounging on the shore.  I would really like to take Alyssa's family up there for an afternoon.

I may have more photos to post later as well.  I hope they are planning on making a CD from the photos taken during camp.

The testimony meeting was held around a campfire up in the mountains and the girls did a faith walk leading up to that which was very powerful and impactful.  It is the first time I saw a faith walk done and I was very impressed.

The fun thing about this year's girls camp is since it was in Ephraim I got to see my two cutie granddaughters...twice.  They came by the first night and then the last night for a little bit.  I also snuck away to take a look at the house they are leasing and hope to buy in about a year from now.  It is quite roomy and on a lot of land.  I was a bit jealous of all the land they have - .8 acres!  They should be able to stay put in that home for many years.  So now with Kelan having his dream job and Alyssa having her dream home, I'm afraid there is no way they will find there way up to Utah County any time soon to live.  We will have to make as many visits as we can.  Luckily it is only an hour and a half away, not a whole continent and an ocean away!