After the long journey ... thoughts

I am wrestling with the idea that a family takes a vacation together for 3 weeks and then when we come home ... life goes back to normal.  Actually ...  I should change my wording.  When a family goes on a TRIP (not as relaxing as a vacation!) together.  When we were on the road, we worked together daily ...  Oscar set up the tent - every time.  Milo and Tuesday unfolded the chairs around the fire.  We all worked to make sure that Casper was comfortable.  Brian and I talked and planned and worked together to get to the next destination while ensuring we could see the sights along the way. Then, when we came home it went back to the "every man for himself" way of living.  Each of us on our own path, intersecting briefly throughout the day.  It seems that this is a "modern" way of raising a family, doesn't it?  That we all "do our own thing".  The pioneers were more of an all for one and one for all mindset.  I believe that there is still time left that we have together as a family to try to get back some of that closeness. Is it just a matter of "gathering around the fire" every night?  Or perhaps we need more travel time together?  Once a month should we just take off in our little camper and sleep away from home together?  There's a way ...  and I will find it.

CC Log #7922

Today is the last day of our vacation. It is a bittersweet day. While it is wonderful to be arriving home it is sad that our cross country adventure has come to an end. We have done so much in the past three weeks that it is mind boggling that we had a life at home. Anyways, 

This is Oscar signing off, for the last time

Backroads

We are on our last little leg of this wonderful trip and we are taking some smaller back highways through Colorado.  Gorgeous.

Sleep

I so sleepy now

At Jedediah Smith's park in Crescent City, CA, we drove through an off-the-beaten-path redwoods dirt path trail called "Stout Grove". It was amazing, and far off the more touristy redwoods trails. The trees were huge, silent, and plentiful. The air was sweet and pure. My favorite tree we only discovered on our second drive through. It had a huge cave at its base, which the kids promptly all went into - even Casper. No fears about spiders or bugs or bats or anything else, they just wanted to get into the belly of the behemoth. Once all four were in, they shined flashlights around inside and made declarations of amazement. They begged Angie and me to go in. It took some courage, but we both went in. The craziest thing was that when I shone my flashlight up inside the huge tree, I noticed that the whole thing was completely hollowed out - and I could see all the way to the top!! Incredible!!

We had a loooooooong day of driving yesterday, I fixed a flat in the middle of a desert, we visited the Bonneville Salt Flats, and got bored of being in the car. We found out that people raced cars at over 600MPH on those flats. We dared not drive the van out though.

Today In Salt Lake City we swam all day, in fact we did two rounds: the sunny round and the dark skies round. Both were fun. The hottub was a little too hot, but the pool was just right. Everyone got plenty of Vitamin D. There were also plenty of stokes that arrived to sun themselves without even getting in to swim. Well, one bearded stoke with a Jamaica bathing suit got in for about 3 minutes but that was it. I was glad because I really didn't want to swim in stoke beardy pool water.

The best part of the day to me was our short venture out into town for pizza just about 10PM. As we left the hotel, we found a small overlook that gave us a panoramic view of the entire metropolitan area. Now fireworks are legal in Utah, and I'll say that EVERYONE was exercising their right to shoot them off. If I told you we could see hundreds of firework displays all at once, you wouldn't believe me. But we DID. We saw huge ones, small ones, colorful ones near and far. It was literally impossible to count the number of explosions we saw across the sky - easily in the hundreds every second. It was probably the most amazing 4th of July display I'd ever seen. Instead of seeing one display, we saw ALL of them!!  I wish my dad could've been there. But my family was, so it was cool.

4th of July

As planned, we spent last night at the Hyatt in Salt Lake City.  We are on break 1 from a day at the pool.  Happy 4th of July, everyone!

I don't know

I don't know what to do for this... I really don't.

Redwoods!

We saw some more redwoods, and now were in Nevada, heading to Utah.

CC log 7316

The past few days not much has happened. Except on the first we saw the redwoods which was spectacular.

Other than that we left the campsite and arrived in Reno. The air smelled odd there. Like expired hazelnut-chocolate coffee. That is really it.

Oscar signing off

Refreshed!

As we left California, we were leaving 6 nights in a row of camping.  Two of those nights we slept in the van.  While I am 100% positive CA is gorgeous under normal circumstances, the drought has made it super gritty and kind of all around dirty.  So, as you can imagine, camping left everything with a coat of fine dust on it.  We spent last night at a Hyatt Place in Reno, NV and we're all clean now! Showers... long showers... shampoo, swimming in the pool, the hot tub and clean bedding!  After we were clean and dried,  we watched Back to the Future together while eating authentic Mexican food (now my favorite food!)  We slept in and are now trekking through Nevada on our way to spend 2 nights at thr Hyatt in Salt Lake City.  Our landscape will not change once during this 7 hour drive so we are all using this time to read and write.  I love our family!

Crescent City

Well, we went to Crescent City, the redwoods were huge! And now we are on our way home! Oh yeah, I also lost a tooth.

Shopping stop... Medford, Oregon

1 peach
1 nectarine
1 apricot
1 plumb

2 gift boxes full of sweet goodness
2 moose munch cylinders
2 summer cookies
2 bee hive rice krispie treats
1 weird craft beef jerky
4 quarts of craft beer
1 can of coconut beer

and gobs and gobs and gobs of samples.

....  good bye Harry & David Country Village!

Relaxed

Even though we've learned some tough lessons in mediating arguments between our kids and others'  (we totally screwed Milo out of a fair trial today... completely threw the poor kid under the bus!) We have been able to relax and relax and relax the last few days here in Crescent City, California. 

CC log #63013

Today we arrived at a campground in the redwood forest. They are so huge! We left the campground on San fransico yesterday and most of it was driving however we did stop at a beach called the glass beach because of all the Weathered glass. Not much else to say.

Oscar signing off.

Cute

Share a Coke with a Hug cute.