It's Over!

Well we arrived safely in Des Moines at 5:00AM on friday morning. Our plane was delayed 3 hours in Pheonix so we didn't arrive in Omaha until around 3:00AM.

It was a great vacation! We all enjoyed the time we were able to enjoy as a family enjoying God's creation. It was a blessing to be able to have 2 weeks with my family before I headed to college.

Thanks for reading!
..::Cal

Day 11 - Walking around the Fran in the San

Well today would be the last full day we have on this wonderful Sr. Trip/End of Summer/Fun vacation/etc... We spent the day exploring the ins and outs of San Francisco. We bought our one day transportation pass. This pass was good for Cable Car, busses, Subs, and I think a few other method's of transportation (piggy backs included).

We started off with a cable car ride:

And then took a picture from the cable care...

Then we found ourselves in China Town...

And then next to a WWII Sub...

Which then led us to a WWII Battleship (last remaining one from D-Day)...

Saw a Joe's Crab Shack (now we know where Joe really works...)

The crab then crawled into one big pair of Levi's

These Levi's decided to jump ship

We lost interest when we found food at Lori's Dinner

But decided to pass when we saw the real food...

Decided to burn those calories climbing this huge hill

to our destination: Lombard Street...

Which we hiked down and then looked back up...

Then to a Giants Game at AT&T Park (hoping to get some advertisement goodies...)

And saw coke (some goodies from coke??)

Then saw Bonds hit 767!!

And then they wished they would have been too chicken to walk bonds...

And finally got thrown in jail..

And that completes our last full day. Tomorrow we're going back to the ball fields and get a free 767 pin... Then we head out and go to San Jose for our plane.

..::Cal

Day 10 - White Water Rafting

Well today we woke up and ate a hearty breakfast at the hotel. Today was the day that we would embark on our white water rafting. All of us except one that is. Mom's back still wasn't feeling normal so she stayed back and shopped. We decided there is a common theme about our vacation... cold water. Because there were salmon in the stream they controlled how cold the water was from a dam (depending on how deep they released the water at). This water was in the mere mid 50s...

Anyways the rafting was perfect for our first experience. It was a couple miles long and the rapids were spread out by still water. There were two level 4 rapids scattered in with a bunch of level 2 and 3 ones.

We all got soaked a few times, on one of the level 4 rapids I just got unloaded on by the river with massive amounts of water poured on me. During some of the still water times we could jump off and just drift in the current. This would be a fine idea if the water was a little warmer... but we did it anyways. Also we played the wheel of misfortune where someone would stand on the front tip of the raft and would have to balance while the others spun the raft around.

Due to the nature of the water we decided not to take the camera along (no point in having to buy two camera's on the trip). There was a photographer who took our pictures but I don't have his website with me at the moment. Here's the picture mom took of us when we got back:

After that we started our trip back to San Fran. We saw mountains along the way:

and when we finally reached San Francisco we were able to see Barry Bond's home run fireworks. We were crossing the bridge right by the stadium when broke the record.

Now tomorrow we are going to just mosey around town and see the sights.

..::Cal

Day 9 - Departure of Ben

Well yesterday was when we took Ben to the airport and said our goodbyes. Before he left we decided to fill our hunger and give him a going-away present and get some healthy food for us. We drove and drove until we found just what we needed to energize our day...

After we dropped Ben off we went to a Christian book store to pick up more books on tape. We picked up two more books that are in the series that we just listened to. Then I bought two two mystery/thriller papperback (not digital) books.

After our stop at the Christian Book store we got reservations for white water rafting (which is what we're going to do today), we headed down into Oregon so we could get closer to the rafting. On our stop there we found an Outlet Mall so we just had to stop and buy things from Nike, Adidas, Aeros, Aerospostle, and Bose (the last one we just visited, we didn't actually buy anything from there). While there mom took a picture of this very pretty tree:

Other than those events there was a lot of traveling done yesterday. Also, we sat in the Van a lot. And on top of that we went swiming at our hotel who's water was freezing!

..::Cal

P.S. Don't worry about today, there will be more pictures and more write ups as we have an eventful day ahead of us.

Day 8 – So Long Ben!

Well today was the last day that we could spend with Ben before he goes off to RA camp. He flies out early tomorrow morning. It has been fun having him on vacation and we’re sorry to see him go.

Today was spent divided up in groups, the guys went to the Mariners baseball game vs. the Boston Red Sox while the ladies went shopping. Both groups took a camera… only one returned with photos and one returned with dead batteries (strange that it happened to be the guy’s camera that had both the pictures and no battery power). Also, unfortunately we seem to have gotten a hotel that advertised highspeed wi-fi access but the only thing highspeed about it is how it fast it works my patience… As a result of that there won’t be any pictures of today’s travels (I may edit this post later and add them).

Red Sox 9 – Mariners 2 . For those wanting a close game this wasn’t one of those games. Seattle had a few disappointing errors that brought them down. But the seating was nice, the day was bright and sunny and the sunburns were red and crisp!

During the game we saw more of the Blue Angels flying. We saw some very good formations and some impressive display of flying. I wish I had a better camera with me so I could have gotten better pictures (and new batteries might have helped too).

..::Cal

Day 7 - Still kickin' in Seattle...

Well Day 7 was yesterday. Hard to believe it's already been a week. Vacations go so fast. In response to one of our readers Josh only brought three Cardinal T-Shirts (he's crushed that he wasn't able to bring his two other ones due to wear and tear on them.) Another note on that is we did wash our clothes in Oregon and washed them again this morning (so any double t-shirts that you see me wearing I should be safe from that). Another note to set aside, our camera broke so the pictures from yesterday are taken by both Ben and I with Ben's camera.

Anyways, back to yesterday. Sleeping in feels so good. Especially when you look at the clock thinking it's 10 but really it's only 8 o'clock.

After we had loaded bodies and snacks in the van we headed around the Puget Sound to the Olympic National Park. This was a rain forest (don't think the real rain forests, think a tree forest with a lot of rain) that's on the opposite side of the Sound and Seattle is.

There were big old tree stumps:

Some water:

More water:

And even some H2O!:

There were a lot of trees (it was a path through to woods... err... rain forest) but the water was very beautiful so most of the pictures we took were of the water (sorry tree lovers).

We finished our last book on tape "Deception" and it's just as good as Thr3e if not better. I'd recommend listening/reading both of these if you like mystery.

After we left the 'Rain Forest' we headed to Bremerton looking for postcards. Unfortunetly we couldn't find any so we just got a picture next to a very nice looking.... trashcan. (note to readers: Bremerton is where the band MxPx is from.)

Today we plan on going to a Mariners game while the girls do a little shopping. Today is the last day Ben's with us before he flies back to his RA training.
..::Cal

Day 6 - Life in Seattle

We spent this day exploring Seattle and just relaxing. It was a great way to spend a day and we were able to get a good taste of Seattle.

After we had a great breakfast at our hotel we drove to a Water Taxi. This taxi would take us acrossed the Harbor to Seattle (we're actually staying in Tacoma). This offered a great view of Seattle's downtown skyline.

From there we went on to Pike Place Market which was a fish market, flowers, and misc. junk vendors.

It was here that we found the first Starbucks:

A few pigs:

The cast for pirates of the Caribbean 4 (ones out of costume):

We also saw fish tossing, tourists, family, weird junk shops, and a bunch of other things in this market.

After we left the market we headed north to the salmon fish ladder and to the locks. It was an interesting stop and was fun to watch the fish try and jump over the ladder.

After we watched the Salmon for a bit we went and had some fresh Fish n Chips. Even though there was some mumbling about Seafood (we won't reveal the identity of the people) overall we all enjoyed the seafood.

It was another great day in our vacation! We're looking forward to today's journey to Bremerton and to the Olympic Gardens as well.

..::Cal

Day 5 - The Road to Seattle

Well today was one of the traveling day. It was a full day with a museum stop, a Microsoft stop, and a Minor League baseball game.

When we left our hotel today we headed into Washington. Our first stop was at a Christian museum of Mount St. Helens. This was a brilliant place that showed how canyons, tree fossils, and other things which some say take "millions of years" to happen can form in a few days as a result of a catastrophe.

After we left the museum we headed to Seattle. Right before we got there we stopped at Microsoft's headquarters and went to the visitors center. It was a cool little display of microsoft's products and the gift shop had some good products. Unfortunetly we couldn't buy software or hardware there (only employees and other VIP people could) or I would have boughten a lot of discounted games, controllers, software, mouse, keyboards there.

We stopped once we got into Seattle for a bit to eat in an old 70s dinner called "Randys". This dinner was unique because it had model airplanes all over the place, it was a regular diner that at first I thought was Chinese due to the fact that it seemed to be owned and run by a Chinese family. Ben pointed out and interesting burger: British Burger. It contained a hamburger with American Cheese served with French fries... not much British about that...

Finally we went to the Minor League AAA Seattle Rainiers baseball game. The Rainiers is who the Iowan Native Jeff Clement plays for. It was fun to see Jeff play again but unfortunetly he was in a slump. We would have some pictures of him but since they were playing the Cardinal's minor league team josh just got pictures of them...

So today wasn't the picture day, sorry about that,
It's a late night and I'm off to bed...

..::Cal

Day 4 – Moving On

So after the 4th day of Vacation we’re finally starting to get used to the new time zone. 10PM doesn’t feel like midnight. I do seem to be able to go to bed earlier so that shows that I’m not completely adjusted to the zone (or I’m just really tired). Speaking of sleeping I only took two different naps today which is a decrease. Those naps were broken up by like 5 minutes of conscious time so you might technically call that one nap. It’s hard taking a nap when you’re listening to another book on tape. This time it’s “Deception”, another mystery that keeps us on the edge of our seat.

After we woke up and left our Woahink Lake Suit this morning and headed to the ATV rentals. Dad, Liz, Josh and I rented ATVs (Mom and Ben were still on the recovery). We spent the next hour having a blast ATVing on the sand dunes. It was a blast! As you can see Dad's holding a broken flag... all I'm going to say was the flag was attached to the back of the ATV...


After that we tried to go swimming again. This time we were in the water a little longer but the same result: the water was freezing and the wind was chilling. I wasn’t in very long before I headed back and changed. Dad, Liz and Josh all remained for a few more minutes. Looks like if we want to do our ocean swimming we’re going to have to go to a warmer spot (Florida).\

When we got dried out and put new clothes up we headed up the coast to see another lighthouse. We were able to get right up to this one after a half mile walk. It was a great sight from the lighthouse but was also prime for that cold wind.


We’re now in Portland catching up on some sleep. We should be able to make it to Seattle today so that’ll be more van rides.

..::Cal

Day 3 – From Cali to Oregon

“Dear Diary,
Today I woke up! WOW!!! Then I posted yesterday’s blog a day late… BUMMER!! Then a ate breakfast! YIPPIEE! And after that we road in the Van! What FUN! And then we got to this place and had more FUN! Can you believe it! I can…” -- Excerpt from my very personal diary…

Anyways, today we began Day 3 of our trip. We started in Garberville, California and ended up in Florence Oregon. After we traveled for a few hours we arrived at the start of the Redwood National Park. We stopped at one of the beaches that’s at the start of the Redwood National Park. Dad, Liz and Josh were drawn the freezing water so this is what happened:

As you can see they got just a little bit wet… They ended up having to change in the Visitors Center, rule of thumb: “If on a beach, wear a swimsuit/shorts”

After that we entered the Redwood forest. When we got into the Old Forest part of it there was this huge tree. The scenery was beautiful and we were in awe of God’s creation. To see something this BIG and peaceful truly shows intelligent design.

And then Dad drove into a tree...

Then we drove into Oregon and stopped at a few coastal areas to admire the scenery (another example of a God who can create unbelievable majesty).
We wanted to try and get to a lighthouse but arrived at 4:30 (an hour after the tour stopped)
Soon after we left the lighthouse we finished our book on tape, “Thr3e”. It’s a very good thriller/mystery book with some good points. If you’re a fan of that genre I’d recommend it.
We’re now spending the night in Woahink Lake Suit. Tomorrow we hope to go Dune Buggy

Riding along with going to Washington.

Enjoy your week!
..::Cal