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This will be my last post about our family vacation for the summer. If you’re sick of all the daily logs I posted (once I eventually got around to it), then that may come as pleasant news; either way, hopefully it’s a good ending.

I did leave out the very last leg in my daily entries, which was the 12th (our anniversary), but it wasn’t very eventful - just a whole lot more driving.

Here’s a link to all our photos from my flickr account. For the Mt. Shasta shots, you’ll have to check out the extensive collections from Randy & Kristi and Nate & Kristen, because Martha kept our camera at the lake while Christian and I were on the mountain.

Noteable photos of stuff I mentioned in my posts:

• The loaded up car - The yellow net wasn’t really necessary, I just threw it on there since I had bought it and didn’t want to feel like I wasted my money. I took it off for the rest of the trip, since the ropes were really what were securing everything.
• The burned through rope we discovered at one of our stops
• My ‘ghetto’ panorama shot (pieced together quickly in photoshop) of the beach/park/pool I mentioned

Note: I didn’t take the time to do any color correction or adjustments on the photos; life is too short for that. I tried to add brief titles and descriptions to some too, but I gave up being thorough on that as well after a while.

2007-08-10

Christian, Randy, Nate and I headed out this morning to begin the climbing of the mountain. We stopped by and picked up ice axes and “crampons” (which are required for the climb). It was pretty rough, but I was careful not to kill myself this time like I did last time, so that was good. A big part of that I think was staying more hydrated, which I was able to do while still carrying less water in my pack than last time, thanks to the spring water from the mountain itself being cleaner than just about anything you can get anywhere else.

We used the Clear Creek route, and hiked up and found a suitable location to set up camp at around 8,700 ft. It was a fairly tough climb up, since it’s uphill all the way (obviously), and some combination of the altitude and my out-of-shapeness made it a bit tougher, but it wasn’t too bad.

Camping was great - the way camping was meant to be - no campgrounds or external resources other than nature and what you pack with you. Looking out from the side of the mountain was a pretty breathtaking view - nothing (mostly) but trees and the tops of other mountains below for miles around. It actually looked like a huge ocean made out of trees spread out below; it was awesome.

I also knew that the view of the stars that night from where we were, especially on a nearly cloudless and nearly moonless night, was going to be excellent, and I was right. I set my alarm on my phone to wake me up at 11pm so that I could do some first class star gazing, and I wasn’t disappointed. I saw *three* shooting stars within a few short minutes, two of which had spectacularly large, clear sparkling tails, almost like out of a movie. Definitely a highlight of the hike.

2007-08-08

After getting breakfast then heading back to the hotel and checking out, we ventured out to / through Stanley Park, which might be best described as the “Central Park of Vancouver” [note: I don't know if people actually call it that, or if we coined that phrase], in that it’s a fairly large park in the center of a “big city” environment (in this case, on the tip of the peninsula).

It was really cool to drive through and check out even more of the excellent natural scenery that we’ve been surrounded with for most of this trip. One particularly cool part was at one section along the beach there was a pool / water park area right on / over the water, and right next to a regular grass park on the shore (with playgrounds, jungle gyms, etc.). So, you can basically have a day at the park, the beach, and the pool / waterpark all in the same place. There was also a large hallow tree that the kids could climb on / in.

Once we were done enjoying the park, we got back on the road, headed toward our next destination (Mt. Shasta / Trinity Lake). We took the same border crossing on the way back out, and this time (now that we knew where we were going on the Canada side) it turned out to be very quick - undoubtedly faster than trying to squeeze through the main I-5/99 crossing. Again, there was no waiting - sailed right through and on our way, despite our large cargo containers strapped all over the car, which could have contained God knows what kind of threats to homeland security (weapons, drugs, civil liberties education literature, etc.).

We knew we would need to stop somewhere along the way, but we figured we’d just play it by ear, so we just drove until we got to Portland, by which time we figured we’d probably want to stop in Eugene, OR, so we pulled off to the nearest Starbucks to grab a coffee and make the hotel reservation online, then finished up the drive down to Eugene.

2007-08-06 - [ More vacation catch-up posts ]

Today was spent exploring Seattle. We went to the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame and the adjoining EMP (Experience Music Project). Both were very fun.

The sci-fi museum was a great reminder of the rich history that exists in that genre, presented in all sorts of media (books, TV, movies, etc.), so much so that I felt a bit like Burgess Meredith during Time Enough at Last.

The music section was cool as well; they had a lot of instruments that the kids could explore and jam on. Riley was happy to find and try out the turntables set up for DJ “scratching”.

After that we took the monorail over to the other side of town to explore. Unfortunately, Riley was standing a bit too close on the platform and dropped his Gameboy down through the gap between the train and the platform. It was a pretty big fall, and I was pretty certain that it was broken, but after we got on the train I decided that it might be worthwhile to go back and get it, just to pull the game cartridge out and hope that wasn’t broken. I headed back over there and was surveying the best spot to sneak into the area under the platform, when Martha (as though she was reading my mind) called me and urged me to just ask one of the employees instead of going the more adventurous route. I ended up reluctantly agreeing to do it that way, and amazingly the device survived intact, with no apparent damage at all!

Then, we explored the downtown area and had lunch with some friends of Kristi’s that had moved up there some time ago. After that, we headed back to the hotel for a little break, and got ready to go up in the space needle, which we did later that evening.

All in all, Seattle seemed like a very sleepy town for a large/semi-large city. Maybe it’s just the fact that we went to NYC so recently, but in comparison, the best way I could think of to describe it was that New York just felt more “alive”, and Seattle was much more on the mellow (bordering on boring) side. We had fun, but I probably wouldn’t want to stay there for much longer than we did.

2007-08-04

We had originally planned to leave on Friday and finish the trip today, but since we had extra time, we decided to go float down the river through Bend during the day. Everyone got some rafts, although I ended up just swimming it, kind of like an all natural “lazy river” with a lot better scenery. The trees and stuff were great, and the water was very relaxing. It was a bit cold at first, but after a while I got used to it.

The wedding of Mike and Heather that this whole trip was planned around was this evening, and it was a lot of fun. It was good to see the whole McMahon clan again, some of whom I hadn’t seen since way back when we were all growing up.