The beginning of June is the Tri-Cities swim meet held at Memorial Park in Pasco, Washington. It is a beautiful pool and the children really love swimming at this meet. It seems a bit far for me (3.5 hour drive) but, again, the children love it. This was Travis' first swim meet and it was pretty funny to watch how excited he was to literally dive in at the deep end and swim a 50 Meter pool. Short course is going to look really short!
After three days in Pasco Brad headed back to Seattle and I headed Southeast with the children. My absolute favorite part of the drive is the climb from Pendleton to Boise. Just gorgeous big sky country and a big hill climb on 6% grade.
After a night stay in Boise we stopped at a beautiful Idaho State Park, Bruneau Sand Dunes.
We then drove more Southeast and went to the City of Rocks National Monument. It would be an amazing place to rock climb. About this time, Victoria started to have really, really bad allergies. Post nasal drip led to some serious coughing. She already takes a daily allergy pill and has been on antibiotics for almost a month for a sinus infection. She ended up having coughing fits if she walked more than 50 feet or so. Part of it may have been altitude. So, alas, no hiking.
We got into Utah and after a rest drove up to Squaw Peak with my Dad so he could show the kids his new Jeep. This is the view of Utah Valley. As a side note, Squaw Peak is where all the college students go to make out (do they still call it that?) so having my children run around outside people's cars in the twilight is great birth control.
Tuesday, Victoria was still not feeling well, so we pushed back continuing our trip to Wednesday. On Wednesday morning we got up early and headed down to a Utah State park, Goblin Valley. Again, Victoria started coughing upon exertion so I think we hiked .5 mile total.
A tiny slot canyon:
Leaving Goblin Valley:
We then drove west to Capitol Reef National Park. GORGEOUS country.
I really let the kidlets climb what they could. We stayed the night in a hotel to the east of the park and had a great dinner at Duke's Slick Rock Restaurant. (Named after The Duke.)
This switchback mountain climb was AMAZING.
Coming out west of Capitol Reef we had an amazing view of Grande Staircase-Escalante National Park's 50 Mile Red Mountain:
On Friday we made it back to parent's house. I made this quilt for my brother, Charles.
I went and saw the Gee's Bend exhibit last year (?) at Bellevue Arts Museum. I was inspired to create a quilt using some of their techniques. None of the fabric was cut (all ripped), no measuring, sewing until it was big enough, and making do.
My Poppy Field Quilt - block design is from Blueberry Farm pattern from Edyta Sitar. The poppy fabric is from Hoffman and is a few years old. The strata stars are Kaffe/Mably/ Phillip Jabobs fabrics.
While in Utah I looked through some old albums trying to find copies of birth certificates of grandparents/great grandparents. I came across this picture of my paternal grandfather. He was a pretty neat guy and I do miss him.
Here he is as a young man. Very handsome! My maternal grandmother passed this January. Wasn't she lovely too?
On Sunday we went to the Hogle Zoo. They've really made some improvements to the animal habitats and are revamping the entire Savannah exhibit, thankfully.
On Monday we headed out towards home. We stopped at Golden Spike National Historic Site and watched the trains come in, then the children earned another Junior Ranger badge. While there I saw this photo on the wall, with my Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather shown on the right (Abraham Hunsaker), and his son on his left. (In the large picture he is 3rd from right.)
After Golden Spike we headed back up into Idaho and stopped at Minidoka. This was a Japanese Interment camp during WWII. Victoria still wasn't 100% (BTW she is fine now we are home and out of the dust.) so she only looked around a little bit but Madeline walked almost the entire trail by herself and read all the signs. She said it was really sad.
We stopped in Baker City for the night and then made an early day home yesterday. I'm tired but had a good time at quilt guild this morning and the park this afternoon. Back to swimming last night!
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