We’ve been on vacation for the past couple of weeks now. It’s been a nice vacation and high adventure, in its own way.
We began by camping at Crater Lake. It’s a big lake, almost inaccessible inside what’s left of a very large mountain in southern Oregon. The water is uniquely blue and clear. There is only one way to hike down to the water. At least, only one sanctioned way. It’s supposed to be a fairly challenging hike, especially on the way back, so we couldn’t do it with the kids. But we checked out quite a bit of the scenery, and the girls were able to become “Junior Rangers.” That’s something the National Park Service does. I’ll upload a picture with this post so you can see a bit of the lake. There may be a little smoke or haze in the picture from the fires burning to the west of Crater Lake.
After Crater Lake, we took two days to travel to Phoenix, where we visited with Ingrid, Jacob, and Joshua, as well as Nancy and Parker. Then we visited with Lee, Laura, Ginger and Farah, as well as Duane, Alix, and Pollyann. (Please excuse any misspellings. My proofreader isn’t present at the moment.) We attended church in Phoenix, and I’ll post more about that later.
After visiting with Grandpa Tom and Jackie, and then Liz, we went to Andy and Tara’s house in the Verde Valley. It was a great time, and relaxing. It was also great to see Tagen, Jaxx, Gaberien, and Marie (Tiny), known to the girls, with great affection, as “the Rimrock Cousins.” Unfortunately, their horse was very sick, but the girls got to milk the goats and swim in the pool. (Sonja read in a book that milking goats’ milk is especially rich.)
From there we went further north to visit with Kirsten, Kirstie, and Caleb. We had dinner with Bestemor and Grandpa Larry, staying with them before heading north again. The real twist in the trip was that we picked up the stomach flu when we first arrived in Phoenix, and it went from Eva to Isaac to Sonja to Erica to Jesse, not quite finishing by the time we were supposed to leave Arizona. So again, we’d like to thank everyone for their hospitality and help that we received on the way.