Underground

For our last day in Oregon, we actually headed to Washington to Mt. St. Helens.  Unfortunately, we couldn't make it to the actual visitor's center because it was just too far away.  We had planned to travel Ape Cave, a 1.5 mile lava tube, with 3 adults and 7 children.  This also includes a 1.5 mile hike back to the car above ground.  The kids were pretty excited.  No one (except me) was nervous or scared about being in complete darkness underground.  Fortunately, I had thought to get the kids headlamps. That ended up being a great idea.  I had a lantern and had trouble seeing.

The kids get ready - all smiles!

The whole gang!

The big hole we're heading down.  Just this hole is foreboding to me.  It just doesn't seem safe or secure.  But, I couldn't back out now.  And, I've done it before, so I was trying not to think about what could happen.  Matthew kept asking if the lava was going to come.  Fortunately, that was a question I could definitely answer positively. 

This is what a lot of the cave is like - a bunch of big rocks on the ground.  You have to crawl over the rocks.  The twins (age 4) were a little more timid, and Dave and Zia were helping them a lot.  That left me trying to keep up with all the other 5 kids that were running ahead.  It was hard to keep them safe and together.  I'm sure there are many dangers of climbing over these rocks, but I was too busy watching the kids to worry too much about them.  It was funny because Rachel got a little "mama-like" with Zia's kids.  She was helping with them and worrying about them when they got too far away from her.  It was cute!

Some parts of the cave had shorter ceilings.  This was a little more claustrophobia-inducing for me.

The biggest concern going in was the 8-foot wall here that we needed to scale with all 7 kids.  It has one good foothold and that's about it.  The big kids had fun scaling it.  They needed a little help but not much.  Then, we just handed up the little kids.  It was no match for us!

The ladder at the end.  Boy, was that a welcome sight.  It was just a little too long.  The kids did really well, but we were losing them.  They don't allow eating in the cave, so Matthew was getting upset.  As soon as we made it outside the cave, we had a big snack.  That, fortunately, changed attitudes - for a little while, anyway.

Zia and Cyrus coming out of the cave

When we parked, it was relatively warm and there was no sign of snow.  When we came out of the cave, there was snow everywhere and the sun was gone, so it was cold.  We had 1.5 miles back through a lot of snow.  The kids were slipping and sliding all over the snow.  It was not fun.  But, we just kept pushing on and all made it in pretty good spirits. A bunny along the route back helped distract us.

The mountain was beautiful on our way in, but we didn't stop for a picture. On the way out, not so much. You can't even tell where the mountain ends and the clouds stop. Oh well. And, on a sad note, we left Portland without ever being able to Mt. Hood. Horrible. We had hoped to ski on it, but that just didn't work, and it was too cloudy to see the mountain. Very sad!

Just Jump!

There was this really cool trampoline place that we took the kids for an hour.  It had trampolines all over the place.  It was a lot of fun and a great workout.  They had a dodgeball court, which we had a good time in.  The kids in there are cutthroat.  Dave got nailed in the face a couple times when he wasn't paying attention.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of that.

They also had a foam pit that you could jump into.  Dave and I were brave enough to flip in there but not on the regular trampolines.  Alex, on the other hand, was crazy.  He was doing backflips into the foam pit and by jumping on the trampolines on the wall and flipping backwards. 

How can this be the beach?

Going to the coast was definitely on our list of things to do in Portland.  This rock is the rock from The Goonies, and during low tide, you can explore the tide pools.  We headed out to the beach after mass in the church that Rachel was baptized in.  We went despite the rain and 50 degree temperatures.  That is classic Oregon weather, so we figured we would just brave it.  When we got there, Zack asked, "how can this be the beach?  It's cold and rainy."  I thought that was funny.  We went out onto the beach, but the skies decided to open up on us a little and we got soaked and were very cold with the wind off the ocean.  We decided this was not going to work.  We headed back to get a treat at the Cannon Beach Bakery.  Fortunately, the weather let up a little, so we went back out to the rock. 

The low tide was not very low today, so we couldn't go out very far.  And, they were very particular about where we could walk.  Therefore, we didn't get to see much.  Rachel did find a little hairy hermit crab, and we saw a couple fish and anemones.

the water was very cold, but the boys braved it for a few jumps in the Pacific Ocean.  Not surprisingly, they got wet, then cold, and we needed to head back to the car to warm up.  Not the best day at the beach, but we made the most of it.

10 Animals at the Zoo

As we had lived in Portland, Oregon before, we knew that we would want to stay there for a few days.  Fortunately, Dave's friend from work, Zia, had room for us to crash there.  He has 3 young kids - Paige, 5, and twins, Quinn and Cyrus, 4.  It was a lot of people, especially kids, in one house.  But, it worked really well.  The kids got along well and we stayed very busy.  The first day we were there was actually sunny, so we decided to take the kids to the zoo.  It was fun, although the kids had a lot more fun climbing on the fake animals and railings than they did seeing the real animals.  I think a trip to the park might have been as fun and a lot less expensive. 

The first, but not last, bear of the trip.

Matthew with buddies, Cyrus and Quinn

Note: kids are not with their respective parents.  Zack's on Zia's shoulders.  He just wouldn't let him alone.  Dave made a good friend in Quinn and carried him a lot at the zoo.

The animals were very active today.  Here, the elephants were drinking and eating.  It was very cute.

Scary lion...

Sweet lion...

Paige is being eaten by the lion

A dome inside the prarie dog cage (or some other similar animal)

Detour to San Francisco

The plan had been at this point to head to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon.  This has a special place for me and Dave because we got engaged there.  But, I checked the weather and conditions.  Snow was headed over the next few days and very little of the park had been dug out from the winter.  So, we decided that that plan was out.  So, we went back to an original idea to go to San Francisco.  We stayed downtown and headed to visit the sea lions on the pier. 

The next day, we just wandered around the city a little.  We went on a tour of a old WWII submarine, the U.S.S. Pampilona.  That was actually pretty interesting to see the inside and learn about life on a sub during the war.  

We had hoped to ride the trolley cars, but there was too big a line and they moved too inefficiently for me. 

My kids were bored standing in line, and this is what happens when my kids get bored.  They find ways to entertain themselves, not necessarily smart ways!

 So, we just headed over to Ghirardelli Square to get some ice cream for lunch.  The kids liked that.  We got their 8 scoop sundae with eight toppings.  No surprise – we had no trouble finishing that. 

 

 

On our way out of town, we checked out the steep roads.  We got out at Lombard Street to see the switchbacks. 

The kids enjoyed running up and down the steps on the side, and again entertaining themselves in non-traditional ways. 

 

We went to go down the 41 degree road, the steepest in San Francisco.  It looked like we were heading off to our death.  Dave pulled up to go over and then decided he did not want to go down.  So, we backed up and went down another way.  We finished off our San Francisco tour as we headed out of the city over the Golden Gate Bridge.  We headed out through Napa Valley.  It was beautiful out there and full of vineyards.  I checked out a website to find if any of the vineyards were kid-friendly.  Surprisingly, there were a couple. One of them was in a castle.  You can take a tour of the castle, including the torture chamber.  Unfortunately, they were having an event, so no tour.  But, we could still do a tasting. That was a little interesting with 4 kids around.  We had hoped to find a nice place where the kids could run around. This wasn’t it, but the guy that did the tasting was good with the kids.  He told us that this castle was the one used in Bedtime Stories.  The wine was good, and we definitely want to get back here one day sans children. 

The Day Dave got a Spanking!

We headed out of the park a different way to make sure we saw as much of the park as possible. We stumbled upon a beautiful waterfall. This was the upper portion of Cascade Falls, which we had seen the day before.


We started out on a makeshift path along the side of the river to see what we could see. The path divided. Rachel and Dave went on one path, hoping to catch up with me and the boys. Our path reached a difficult place to pass, so the boys were climbing on rocks.


Zack was determined to get around the path and headed up a steep path. But, then he was crying out to me. I couldn’t tell what he was saying, but I could not leave Alex and Matthew at the river’s edge. I was getting stressed out because the boys were making me nervous and Dave was nowhere to be found. I told the kids that Daddy was misbehaving. One of them asked me if he was going to get a spanking, and I decided that was a good idea. We decided to head back and take the path that they took. This was a steep path up the mountain on slippery brush. The kids would take a step and slide down a little. We went up awhile, but it was getting treacherous for us and I still had no sign of Dave. I was frustrated with him that he had gone this far without realizing that he was not going to reach us and turned around. I was really getting worried that either he or Rachel had gotten hurt or they were lost. The kids asked if Daddy would get a spanking if he were hurt, and I said that he would not if he were injured. So, Matthew began hoping that Dave was hurt, so that he would not get a spanking. I didn’t really understand his reasoning. But, we decided to head down the mountain and wait for him. It was awhile before he finally showed up. I did give him a couple spankings, which cracked the kids up. Apparently, he and Rachel had gotten into a tight spot and done some risky rock climbing. Not exactly what I wanted to hear.


Going up proved not to get us a better view of the falls, so we headed downward. We actually got to a place where two rivers merged before heading off the cliff. It was pretty scary there, but it was beautiful . These falls are neat because they go down to just a trickle later in the year. It’s pretty hard to believe given the amount of water that it pouring down it now.

Ramblings by Jes, Part 2 - Food

On a trip like this, we knew that we were going to be eating a lot of dinners out. We, as a family, love eating out and making meals is not my favorite thing to do. So, I knew that eating meals out would be nice – for awhile. As it turns out, 4 weeks in, we’re not really tired of eating out. We tend not to eat at fast food unless we really need to get in and out quick, so that helps. Fast food can get really unappealing after awhile. For the most part, we have eaten breakfast at the hotel – as long as we get up in time.

We’ve had the gambit of breakfasts, everything from simple cereal and toast to nice, hot breakfasts with a cool pancake maker to a full breakfast buffet. But, if we have a breakfast included with our hotel, we’ve taken full advantage. For a lot of the trip, we’ve been in the middle of nowhere at National Parks. Since the food availability is unpredictable at the parks, we would stop somewhere to get some food for lunch, usually just at a convenience store. Fortunately, most of them had some sandwich makings and hiking snacks. We’d head out to hike a trail or two, snacking along the way. Finally, we’d get to making sandwiches at the car mid-afternoon. Then, we’d try to soak in as much of the rest of the park before it got too late. We wouldn’t even leave the parks until 6 or 7, as we headed out to our next destination. Since we were in the middle of nowhere, there were usually no restaurants around. So, we would drive and drive, hoping to find a good place to eat. It was usually 8 or even 9 before we found somewhere to eat, often a hole in the wall place in a small town along the road – some good, some not so much. Then, we’d drive a couple hours before we crashed in a roadside hotel and start the whole process again. We’ve really gotten into a weird eating pattern, but at least we’re all on the same schedule. I’ve been amazed that the kids have rarely complained about being hungry – thankfully, since often we could do nothing about it. One day we actually went 9 hours between meals. We had eaten at IHOP at 11 and then went to Death Valley and nothing, nothing, nothing until we finally found a gas station at 8 PM. That food tasted good!


As you can imagine, we haven’t eaten the healthiest food. We bought a thermoelectric cooler that plugs into the car. I had plans of filling it with healthy food to snack on in the car. But, that requires stopping at the grocery store, and literally, we could not find one and we rarely had time for that anyway. We are in constant motion. Usually we just made quick stops at convenience stores. I think we’ll have to have a completely new diet when we get home.