Sunday, April 12, 2009

Spring Break

I had good intentions of posting daily while on vacation over Spring Break, but failed miserably. Coming home and then having both Pete & I get sick all week didn't help get anything posted sooner than this.
The kids had the week of March 30-April 3 off for Spring Break and as any of you with school-age kids know you get the heck out of dodge if you can when the kids don't have school. It has been a tradition for us now for a while to visit family in Washington over Spring Break usually about every other year or so. We typically drive straight up and back spending the entire week with family. This year we decided to do it a bit differently. We hitched up the 5th wheel trailer this time. On Friday evening we first drove to Reno and stayed the night at G'ma and G'pa's (Pete's parents). The next morning we got up early and drove to San Francisco, Pete's dad Walt joined us for the rest of our trip. We had a gorgeous day in SF with our personal tour guide - Matt, Pete's childhood friend, who lives there. We rode cable cars, walked through Chinatown, saw Lombard St, went to Fisherman's Wharf for clam chowder and shrimp, and Pier 39 to see sea lions (all Kylie & Logan cared about). The kids were wonderful, never a whine or argument from any of them! That night we drove to Santa Rosa, CA and slept in our trailer. On Sunday we spent the day with another long-time friend of Pete's, Andy and his family at their home and then at a nearby park that was wonderful - carousel, train, etc. We had another beautiful day weather wise, it was soooo warm. Later in the afternoon we hit the road and drove up the CA coast through the redwoods and stopped in Eureka for the night. The next day was spent driving up the Oregon coast stopping briefly along the way at Gold Beach, then Battle Rock in Port Oreford getting out for a little bit. It was sunny but very windy and cold so we didn't stay very long. We then went to the Sea Lion Caves in Florence, the kids really enjoyed that. We originally planned on continuing up the OR coast but at this point we were losing daylight and the slower winding road with a trailer in tow was taking its toll so we cut over to Eugene and up I-5. We stopped for the night just past Vancouver, WA. We woke up to rain (welcome to Washington) and drove a couple hours to our destination, the home of some of Pete's family in Buckley WA. The next few days were spent in leisure hanging out, doing some shopping, and trying to stay dry as it rained the whole time (and even a little snow on Apr. 1 - no April Fools joke). We went to a cool indoor swimming pool one day. I spent some time scrapbooking another. We left late Saturday night and drove to Yakima, then spent Sunday driving the remaining 10 hours home. A lot of driving, but the kids did great.

2 comments:

mbreck said...

You must take me next time. Oh, and my 3 kids. He he he. You know you want to.

Jill said...

This looks like a great trip. Even a little family friendly. I've always wanted to drive along the coast.