Family Vacation 2018 - Oregon Road Trip!

Our trip to Oregon this July started out with some difficulties.
First off, I had trouble sleeping so I woke up at approximately 4 AM. The cat was begging to be let out and I figured she had a couple of hours, what's the harm? Well, come 6 AM and we're waking up the kids, no cat to be seen. Come 6:15 and the kids are getting in the car... still no cat. 6:30, and we're completely ready to go, except for one thing. The cat. Still missing. Kyler and I both walk up and down the street, looking for her. Finally, we decide to set out some food and water for her, get in the car, and do one last check while driving around. If we can't find her, I figure I'll text the people who will be feeding her and worry myself sick. But on the very last pass, the street next to ours... I spot her! Whew. And on the road we go.

Things go well, kind of. We stop and play and change clothes outside of Calgary...

and realize an hour later we left one of Caleb's sandals behind.

We have chicken and slurpees and 7-11, and the decide to be touristy at Frank Slide.

It was, as always, awe-inspiring.
We head past Sparwood and the World's Biggest Truck, and I think it's kind of strange to not be stopping there, since we usually take a break there. Then, about 3 km down the road... and traffic is at a standstill. A few minutes after we've been sitting there, and incident truck comes by and they tell us the road is closed because of an accident and will be for several hours(!). We should just head into Sparwood. So we do. We head to the Truck and visitor's centre,

and look up the driving conditions. Yup, predicting a 5 hour delay, no detour available. We decide to wait it out in Sparwood, and the people working the visitor's centre helpfully give us a map and point out the park. So, three hours from our end goal for the day, we are stuck. Still, we make the best of it. The kiddos have a ton of fun playing at the park.

It has a splash pad, too, and I tell them to go for it. Get soaked if they want to.

We change them into pajamas after. Then we head to a small pizza place. They were absolutely slammed, including more than one family we'd seen talking about the road closure at the park.

But they kept us supplied with water and brought us the largest order of fries I have ever seen.

After we finish our pizza, I check the status and finally, the road has re-opened!

3.5 hours behind schedule, we are on the road again. The border was a breeze, though, and the kiddos were as good as we could possible hope. Later, I found out that a motorcyclist was hit by a falling tree and died. What a crazy, sad, freak accident.

The next day was much less exciting, which we didn't mind.

We finally got to my parents, the kiddos got to play with their cousins,

and we were happy just to be out of the car for a while.

The next day we had family pictures, which I'll post about separately. I'll also make a separate BEACH! post.

While we were in Oregon, we were able to relax and spend time outside and with family.
One day, we took a walk through the park I grew up in.

Craig named it, "Floppy Photographer Forest," because alliteration.

We headed to the library and enjoyed playing with toys,

reading books,

and playing at the park.

We took a walk through the nature park, with Craig asking several times, "is this nature?"

 Then at one point, he said, "Look. It's an owl." We all said, uh huh, sure it is. And then we looked up.

 An owl! It's a barred owl, apparently.

 Good eye, little man.

 

They were a little disappointed we didn't buy anything at the gift shop, but that's too bad for them.

And in between all the things we did, there were plenty of moments for kids to be kids.

Ivy found a partial skeleton in the side of my parents yard. We're pretty sure it's a vole.

Kiddos played and generally had fun together. And got along really well, considering.

Everybody loved Grandpa,

and helping him in the garden.

And to top it all off, I met a couple of vampires. 

So scary!



I also went on a date with my dad! We went to see a Hillsboro Hops baseball game.

And he bought me Cracker Jacks. Thanks, Daddy!



We had a much less eventful drive home, mostly because we didn't let this guy drive.

We stayed the night in Creston. It was a small little town, and we enjoyed taking a short after dinner walk.

We saw Canada's smallest park

 and played on a public piano,

because when a piano implores you to "Make Music With Me," you have to listen.

Whew. A nice vacation, but we are glad to be back home. Vacationing is exhausting!