Pack Trip

This year we got to go on a backpacking trip with the kids from the ranch again. This is something they try to do every year, but it usually gets postponed because of fire danger, and then it snows and the fire danger goes away, but its too cold to camp in the mountains. This was a good summer because we had a good amount of rainfall and the fire danger was never very high. We had great weather the whole week, which we were very thankful for.
We hiked about 4 1/2 miles into this beautiful mountain lake right on the border of Montana and Idaho. There is a pretty nice campsite that people have just put together up there. We had a great campfire area and some people had built a long table between some trees. We went the first half of the week with some other staff and about half of the girls. The boys were at another lake about 30 minutes down the trail with other staff. Then, on Wednesday, we hiked those kids out, and the other half hiked in and stayed until Saturday. So, we were in the woods without showers for 7 days. Thank goodness for wet wipes.
Actually, one night I got the idea that I should wash my hair in the lake because I was feeling pretty gross. One of the girls had shampoo with her- who knows why- and Kaatje and I went down to the lake and I laid on this raft we found down there. While John was coming to bring me hot water, yelling and making tons of noise the whole time, two big bull moose came down and started drinking from the lake right next to the campsite. It was incredible to watch them. Montana moose aren't nearly as big as other moose, but they seemed huge. We thought it was really funny that John was making so much noise making fun of me for washing my hair, and the moose didn't really seem to even notice us.
We also did a lot of hiking around the area while we were up there, which was awesome. We hiked up and over the ridge behind the lake and went across the top and then down into this other lake where we caught lots of cutthroat trout. We also found an abandoned mine shaft above the lake and were able to go down inside about 30 feet where you could see it had collapsed.

John hiked with his backpack AND carried his guitar in the whole way, just so that we could sing songs around the campfire and have devotions every night. The guys at the boys camp said they could hear us singing at night and were pretty jealous. The kids all had a great time. We couldn't have asked for a better week, and it counted as field trip days for school! What could be better?

Vancouver/Victoria Vacation

This year for vacation we thought we would take a road trip up to Canada to see some things on the coast instead of flying back to Indiana. After some adventures, which included getting a friend to the airport just a minute too late to make her flight back to Indiana, all because we were trying to pack up everything at the last minute, we finally made it. We decided at the last minute also, that we should drive up north to Canada and then cut across to get to Vancouver- BAD IDEA! It took forever and we were driving through the mountains almost the entire time. It was pretty though, and we got to stop at a waterfall we had been wanting to get to in northern Montana for awhile. So, the morning after we get there, John wakes up sick. We were tent camping, so being sick in a tent is no fun. I started looking for an inexpensive hotel, but we decided to just stick it out and fortunately John started feeling better that afternoon. We got to do some really cool stuff, like a sea safari in a rigid hull inflatable boat, which was like a roller coaster ride on the ocean. We saw a baby seal on a rock that was only a few days old and got some pretty cute pictures. We also got to go to the Vancouver Aquarium where we saw a baby beluga whale, and of course tons of other sea life. We took the ferry to Victoria and went whale watching and saw a killer whale. We would have liked to stay and explore the island a little, but we were so ready to go home that we only spent one day there and then headed back home. On the way home we stopped in Seattle to eat at the Cheesecake Factory, which we were way excited about since Seattle is the closest one and its 8 hours away. So we did really have a good time and got to do some really cool stuff. It was just an exhausting, adventurous vacation.