This is where we went.

We went on a monster road trip. It was 3100 miles and 17 days. It was sooo fun. The day after we got back, we went to the dentist. The hygenist asked Alex where he went on his trip. Alex said, "I don't know, we just drove around a lot." So, this blog is for all the kids who WENT on this trip with Andre and I. This is where we went....

Shoshone Falls. It is 5 minutes outside of Twin Falls, Idaho. It was a beautiful -get out of the car for a while- stop.

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Andre's Uncle Steve and Aunt Vicky's house. We also met a couple of his cousins that he hasn't seen for 20 years or so. Great food, conversation and a great place to stay. Thanks!

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We hit a couple of Oregon Trail and Lewis and Clark museums. They were great to get out of the car for a while and let the kids learn something- or just run around.

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We camped along the Columbia River. This river is massive. Huge even. And there were lots and lots of rocks to throw into the river.

Then we got to swim in the Columbia River.

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There is a section of the river called the Columbia River Gorge. It has tons of waterfalls. We saw a bunch of them.

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The most famous and picturesque is the Multnomah Falls

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Then we headed north and stayed in a place called Paradise Point State Park. It was beautiful. and we found this great swimming and playing in the sand beach.

The only drawback was that it was under the freeway. Yep. That is Interstate 5 right above the state park swimming beach. The kids didn't care and it was shady but it was really noisy.



Moving on: this was Sylvia Lake State Park. This was the first rain we had and it was just a drizzle. We had part of the lake right by our tent and we fell asleep to the sound of frogs ribbit-ing away

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Then we found the ocean!

Famous last words: "Don't get your clothes wet". Ya, Jax and T were soaked in 2 minutes.
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Kalaloche (sp?) Tipe Pools. One of the highlights of the whole trip. We met up with all of my family and had a FUN reunion.

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Those are real sea stars right there in the wild!

This pond they are in was full of anenimes and lots of other cool stuff.

It was so beautiful.

Hoh Rain Forest- Amazing

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For all of you Twilight fans: we drove through Forks! They had an auto tour to go see some of the sites- but we didn't care that much. Plus our husbands would not have done it.

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Then we stayed at my brother and sister in law's house near Seattle and they took us to some of their favorite haunts.

"Crab Beach" That is what the kids called it. You would pick up a rock and 2 or 3 crabs would scurry away. Of course we caught a few hundred.

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"Sand Dollar Beach" You would just walk around and see thousands of sand dollars, living and dead, all over the beach (at low tide).

The dead ones are the white ones. The living ones are like the ones Tanner are holding. They are black and have millions of soft spikey things coming out of it. Tanner and Jaxon liked to call these little ones "sand dimes".

Then we took a huge ferry across the bay to Seattle. We drove onto it!

It was really fun to explore the boat and see the view.

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We went to Pike Place Market and saw them throw a few fish.

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We saw the Freemont Bridge Troll.

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Saw the Seattle Lockes....

and the Salmon Ladders.

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Then we left my brothers house (sad) and ventured on down to Mount Saint Helens. They have tons of visiters centers and view points on the way up. But it was really overcast and we could not actually see the mountain.

If it was a clear day the mountain would have been right behind us.

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We crossed over the Astoria Bridge over to Oregon again. Goodbye Washington. We crossed over a lot of bridges. But this one was AMAZING. It was FOUR miles long. I could not believe it. I told you it was a huge river.

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We stayed in a place called Fort Stevens State Park. We could not check in until four so we went to find a beach. We found an amazingly fun beach.

The older boys loved digging these holes and then watching the waves crash into them.

SAND! We all loved digging in it.

But there was also water there. Lots of it. And really fun waves. This beach had millions of birds flying across. It was so cool.

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That night we went to a different beach closer to our camp site. There was this huge sand dune and the kids LOVED it. They dug these big bunkers in it.

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That beach had this old shipwreck. It has been there since WWI I think. It was cool.

But it was even cooler at the sunset.

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The next day we found ourselves at Indian Beach at Ecola State Park. It had a cool stream running through it so the little boys had fun with boats. This was an amazing weather day with blue- blue skies and about 80 degree weather.

Look at that sky and the ocean. It was SO beautiful. Another beach- another beautiful sunset. We went to the Newport Aquarium and it was awesome. -

It was really foggy after we left the aquarium so we headed north to get out of the fog. We found this fun beach. I think it was called Fogerty State Park. -

The next morning before the fog got bad again we went to the Yaquina Head light house.

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Then we went to the Sea Lion Caves. If you look closly you will see brown things all over the rocks. Those are the Sea lions and there were hundreds of them.

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On our last day on the Oregon coast we wanted to find a beach to play at. That is what the boys loved the most. This was at Oregon Dunes State Park. It was so fun. See those dunes in the back ground? we had to climb that hill and then go back down to get to the beach. It was like the Mount Everest of sand dunes. I almost didn't make it. The kids had tons of fun in the sand and waves- but then we played on the dune. It was a fun place to play.

The little boys had warmed up to playing in the ocean. But the funnest game was to run into the ocean when the wave was out and then run back screaming when the waves came crashing in.

Chase loved this game too.

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We left the coast and drove to Crater Lake. It was very beautiful. But I found out that it was the 10th most dangerous volcano in the United States.

I had to put in this picture of Chase. Just because.

So to sum up... we just drove around a lot.

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Well I think that was a pretty short summery considering I took over 600 pictures. But I am sorry that it was so long.