School Begins

Jack: Second Grade with Ms. Coulombe
Lachlan: Third Grade with Ms. Stewart

 We love Principal Johnson!

 Going upstairs with the big kids!

 It will take Lachlan all year to remember these kids' names. We are working on making eye contact and building relationships this year.

 Jack's class has an "under the sea" theme for the year. Mrs. C is the Captain of the ship. Jack's goal is to be the best reader in the class.

Crater Lake, Oregon

I'm hoping that if I do this right, I'll be able to publish our summer vacation in the correct order. Here's to hoping. We traveled with the Sargents this year--we both wanted to check out some new sites. We drove through Bend and down to Crater Lake, Oregon. It was so fun for the kids to go together on this trip.

Crater Lake is huge and the hiking is outstanding. There are so many different types of landscapes to observe, from solid lava fields to wooded forests to deep, suicidal gorges. It was even more interesting than I anticipated.

 Family portrait in front of Wizard Island. It's not a "normal" island. This is actually a new cone to the volcano that surfaced after the initial implosion. This is also the point when the kids finally believed me that they were going to need their sweatshirts on this trip.

Sara and I breathing in the fresh air. The kids were screaming in the background about a mouse living near the base of a tree. They were running around trying to catch it/not catch it. You also can't see that Shane is out moving around. He had a mangled ankle and was sans boot for the first time in weeks. He managed to hobble up the steep to check out the view from this point of the lake.

 100% overcast and still pretty amazing. The lake has no outlet. It was filled completely by snow melt and rain accumulation. The depths are incredible hundreds of feet deep. There are some fish and salamanders, but no boats are allowed on the lake. It has to be because it is a wicked hike down to the water.

 A closer look at Wizard Island. The cone.

Our main goal was to wear the kids out at every chance--it wasn't really hard because they just wanted to run, run, run. There are so many large trees to climb on, it's easy to forget that trees aren't just for landscaping.
 One of our shorter hikes took us through a large meadow. The hikes were perfectly shaded. We couldn't have asked for better weather. Tyler helped Louisa on most of the hikes. He was so good to make sure that she could get through the slippery rocks and see the flowers on the guide book.

 Exploring with dad.

 We never really knew where the hikes were going to go, or what we would see on them. This was an incredible view of a massive gorge. You could hear water at the bottom, but we never dared get close enough to the edge to see it. The gorge appeared to go on for miles.

 Sara and Shane.

 Jack practicing his balance on something he shouldn't be standing on.

Jack with the Phantom Ship in the background. A large rock formation that juts out of the lake. After we left Crater Lake we headed down to a motel outside of Medford, Oregon.

The Redwoods

The drive from Grant's Pass, Oregon to Crescent City, California may very well be the creepiest stretch of highway I've ever driven. It is heavily forested and while you drive along you get glimpses of these barricaded, ramshackle houses OR mini shanty towns surrounded by barbed wire. Way weird. Jeff and I must have said a thousand times, "Who lives out here? Where do they work?" Oh, and don't forget the "RafterB" store in town with a sign on it stating something about the evilness of the United Nations. We did not stop until we hit the ocean.

Crescent City has some wonderful tide pools. The kids (and Sara, AKA Rockhound) found hundreds of shells, hermit crabs, tiny fish--and the sun was shining! Lots of wet shoes and socks, but very happy faces. I think Sara almost cried she was so happy about her shell collection.

 Jack thought he could step easily across the rocks, until the tide came in and soaked him up to his calves. He's pondering the dilemma in this shot.

 This isn't even close to how many she hauled home...she had gallon bags full. Oh, and I had to laugh because she kept her's separate from the kids'--wouldn't want to contaminate the collection with inferiority. Too funny.

The face of a proud collector.

I wondered if the Redwoods would really look different enough to notice without signage--it's obvious. And humbling. These are the tallest trees on earth and there are few ways to describe the immensity of such an incredible organism. I would have loved to stay for a month and just explore the trails. It's definitely the kind of place where I feel overly emotional at the scale of nature. I didn't see ONE pine cone. I was able to find some Sugar Pine cones--Jeff only let me bring four. I wish I could have hunted one Redwood cone down.

Jack was in heaven. It was an explorer's paradise!

 Random tree off the side of the road. The kids were so excited! Below is actually the inside of a massive tree. I didn't even think about bats living in there until we got home and I saw a science clip on the news about studying bats inside Redwood trees. Kind of glad, cause I wouldn't have let them get way up in there.

And now, prepare yourself for an obscene number of tree photographs. My favorite hike was almost four miles though the Cathedral of Trees. It was phenomenal!

 My favorite tree shot.

 Walking through the Ewok forest--where the Return of the Jedi was filmed. I'm telling you, Jack was in heaven. Lachlan was more concerned that Ewoks were "real"--"Are they real, dad? Cause I don't want to be walking around here if they are real."

 The pictures just cannot capture the size. You can see how small Jeff is at the base of this tree.

 Louisa loves Tyler. She calls him, "Mah, fav-yit." (My favorite) He packed her lazy carcass for miles.

 King of the castle. Standing on the overgrown roots of a felled tree. Sharing the victory with Tyler and Chris.

 Okay, these mushrooms. If you want to see my inner science nerd come out with a vengeance you should see me fawning over these babies. I've since learned that these are "Chicken of the Woods" mushrooms. You can actually eat them. There was a whole rotted stump covered in them. I even broke my own rules of leaving the trail to get some pictures. Fungi are amazing!

"The Big Tree"--actually the end of the hike. Six kids to span the width. I'm not so sure it was the biggest tree we saw as far as diameter is measured, but it was noted at this point for it's height. Fortunately, it was also located near a bathroom which saved us from a major "pants peeing" incident with Louisa. No joke--not one whiny voice on some serious hikes. It was perfect!