Our Summer Vacation

The kids always love the beach no matter how cold it is.

Do you have a traditional place you always go for a summer vacation? We don't. We go somewhere different every single year. I guess we've never found a place we loved enough to go again and again. But it would simplify life if we did!

This year we decided to go to the Pacific Northwest since my husband spent the first 18 years of his life there and still has relatives living in the Seattle area. It's been 11 years since we last visited so it was definitely time to go again.

Here are some of the things we did:

Driving on Interstate 84 next to the Columbia River Gorge. That has to be one of the most scenic drives a freeway can offer. We stopped at Multnomah Falls on our way and looked around. That was also beautiful.

We brought 6 kids on this trip.

Camping on the Oregon beach. The showers were hot and plentiful, the bathrooms were close, as was the beach. I wouldn't have minded the weather being a little warmer but for the most part it was fine. I was worried about rain but, except for a little shower one night, we didn't get rain. The kids enjoyed it a lot.

We actually did get some sun despite how foggy this picture looks.

This was my usual beach attire. You can bet I never got near the water. It was just way too cold for me.

As we were leaving Oregon, we stopped by Cannon Beach which is a little famous. The beach was even colder and windier than the one we camped by and we didn't stay long.

Camping near Mt. St. Helen's. The eruption of Mt. St. Helen's in 1980 was a very memorable event for my husband since he lived nearby. Every May 18th, he reminds us that that was the day it erupted. So we camped at Seaquest State Park and then drove up to Johnston's Ridge to go to the Visitors' Center and learn more about it. We couldn't have a fire at our campsite because of the dry weather and extreme fire danger.

Here is a tree in the visitors' center that got blasted by the volcanic wind that accompanied the eruption.

Visiting Seattle and Tacoma. We really enjoyed the Seattle Science Center. You could spend the whole day there and not see everything. The membership turned out to be a great deal for us, costing about half the price of regular admission for our large group. The traffic out of Seattle was horrendous and I'm just glad we made it back safely.

They had a cool butterfly exhibit that Camille and I enjoyed together.

On a different day, we visited and Seattle LDS temple and then we went to Dash Point State Park which has a beach and is part of Puget Sound. Scott helped the older kids make a raft out of a couple of logs which provided some entertainment. But that night Scott lay awake, thinking about what might have happened if they had started drifting out to sea with no life jackets or oars, Fortunately that didn't happen.

Visiting family graves. Scott had never visited the graves of his grandparents. We saw his maternal grandparents' graves in Vancouver, Washington, and we saw his paternal grandparents' graves in Snohomish, Washington.