The week of July 18 - 25, Ben and I went to Washington state with his whole family (minus Brittnae)! Nadine's family was having a reunion that weekend. They had been planning this reunion for two years, and it sounded like it was going to be a lot of fun!
I was worried at first that I wasn't going to be able to go, because I had to take a math class at the college that didn't end until July 20th, but we needed to leave on the 18th. Luckily, my professor gave us a take-home final, and he let me take it a few days early!
Tuesday night, we all had a big sleepover at Mom & Dad Stratford's house. The next morning, we all piled in the cars and headed out. We took two vehicles: Larry's Dodge (pulling the camp trailer) and Lyndee's minivan.
The first day was quite an adventure. We were in the car for about 12 hours, and to keep ourselves from going crazy we made jokes and laughed, watched movies, drank caffeine, and I crocheted until my hands ached. As we were driving through Idaho, there were jokes that went on for hours. Some of the topics for said jokes were potatoes, promiscuous cows, and the town of Burley, where we had our first (of three) tire blowouts.
That first night we camped at Farewell Bend in Oregon. By the time we finally got there it was already totally dark. So, as you can imagine, setting up camp (including two tents) was super fun. And there were bugs. By the time we realized that little tidbit most of us had already been practically eaten alive. No worries though, there were no fatalities.. that night.
The next morning we got up, ate breakfast, packed up, and headed out! We were only in the car for about 9 hours this time. And we went all the way to Port Townsend, WA.
Pictures!
Day 2 - On the road
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| We stopped at a really neat store that sold local fruit and lots of cool antiques |
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| Naval Destroyers! |
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| You have to do drastic things in order to survive a week in the car with your in-laws.. ;) |
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| The Puget Sound! |
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| Captain Ben |
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| First Mate! |
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| Love him! |
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| This doe was so calm. I probably could have walked right up to her and pet her if I had the guts. |
Day 3 - Fort Worden, Port Townsend, WA
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| A beautiful sunrise through the fog, just off the pier. |
Before we left for Washington, we researched fishing licenses and decided that we wanted to go crabbing! So we got all set up, packed the crab net, bought some chicken and let it rot, and we were good to go!
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| Our first catch: a Dungeness crab and a starfish (we caught tons of starfish, the must love rotting chicken!) |
During the two days that our licenses were good, we crabbed as much as we could. We would set up the crab net and let it sit for a while, then come back and check on it. We had at least something in the net every time we pulled it up. We caught quite a few crabs and starfish. We had to throw back most of the crabs though, because they weren't big enough. We ended up only being able to keep one crab, but that was okay. We cooked it in the trailer at camp, and it was really yummy!
More crabbing pictures!
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| Our licenses were also good for regular fish, but we didn't even get a single bite. :( |
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| Lyndee and Russ came with us to try regular fishing! |
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| A jellyfish.. I'm glad we didn't catch this guy! |
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| I love the way the ocean totally takes over anything man-made.. especially all the barnacles and plants growing on the pier. |
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| Ben was (and is!) the master crabber. |
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| There were lots of boats out in the sound. |
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| These are two of the biggest starfish we caught. |
A quick story about starfish: When we would catch them in the net, we would just take them out and throw them back into the water. But then we kept catching the same starfish. So one time, Ben asked Nick to take the starfish to the other side of the pier and toss it in the water. Nick took ahold of one of the legs of the starfish, and when Ben let go, the leg ripped off of the starfish's body! Nick felt so bad, but we let him know that the little guy's leg would grow back. After Nick dropped the starfish, I decided to pick it up for him. I thought I had a picture of me holding it, but oh well. :) The thing was so slimy and wiggly that I had a hard time hanging on to it too!
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| Our friend, the seagull. More about them later. |
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| There was a family of river otters playing on the loading dock. They were the cutest things! |
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| A cargo ship |
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| Ben is very resourceful. Especially when we run out of marshmallow roasting sticks. |
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| He's probably the cutest thing since puppies. :) |
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| Candid shot! Haha, Mom wasn't quite speedy enough to get out of the frame :) |
The next day, one of the relatives at the reunion offered to take us out on his boat to try fishing again. It was a lot of fun!
Day 4 - Fort Worden, Port Townsen, WA
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| The boys |
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| The wake |
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| Boats! |
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| More boats! |
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And... more boats!
(Sorry, I was just a tad bit camera happy that day) |
There is a reason for so many boats being out on the water.. there was a salmon fishing competition going on that day. No wonder we didn't get any bites!
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| Seagulls! |
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| Aww :) |
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| Yes I look awkward. Yes, I was aware of it at the time. I just hadn't found my sea legs yet. Don't judge. |
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| The lighthouse! |
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| We found a sea lion hanging out on one of the bouys. |
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| Okay, maybe I was more than camera happy. More like camera crazy. |
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| I know it looks really small in this picture, but out there in the distance is the top of a nuclear submarine being escorted out of the sound. It was so cool! |
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| A really pretty sailboat we saw :) |
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| :) |
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| This is supposed to be a ladybug. Didn't work out so great. I blame it on Ben for teasing me about taking pictures of ladybugs "that are all over the place back home." |
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| Beach Combing aka digging around searching for sea shells that are in one piece and not shattered all over the place. It was a difficult task! |
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| There was a really neat lighthouse at Fort Worden, and some of the family took a tour of it. We decided that we wanted to look for seashells (and the boys wanted to collect rocks to shoot out of their wrist rockets), so we admired the lighthouse from afar. :) |
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| Okay, that time it was Ben who was camera happy. |
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| Yup. He's a goober. :) |
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| This beach was around the other side of the lighthouse. |
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| So pretty! |
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| Love him! |
Ben & Brandon wanted to go exploring, so we did! We found an old military bunker thing where the guns would have been pointed out into the sound.
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| Yes, their bums are hazardous areas. Believe me. I spent four straight days in a car with these two. |
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| Ooo.. ghost picture! |
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| There was a track on the ceiling in one of the rooms |
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| The deep, dark tunnel that Jessica didn't want to go into. |
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| But I went anyway. For a minute. Until something dripped on me and I screamed, turned around, and ran til I saw the bright, happy, warm, not-drippy sunshine. |
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| Why must we go into the dark, scary places?? |
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| Cruise ship! |
Day 5 - Fort Worden to Salt Water State Park
Ben took lots of pictures the morning that we left Fort Worden, mostly to document what our campsite looked like, and to get some pictures of the awesome trees!
These next few pictures were in one of the buildings in the fort, called the Commons.
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| The military band |
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| This is a picture of the place that Ben, Brandon, and I explored. Sorry about the flash! |
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| Marching! |
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| The drive from Fort Worden |
We went to church that morning in Port Townsend, then we headed on to our next camping destination, at Salt Water State Park.
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| So happy that the sun is shining! |
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See? Sunshine creates happiness!
And that is the tent that Ben & I and Lyndee & Russ slept in all week. |
Story time about camping with the Leavitt's! One time we spent the night at Ben's grandparents house in Salt Lake, and the room we were in is really big, and has two queen sized beds in it. Ben and I had one, Lyndee and Russ had the other, and kiddos were sprawled out all over the floor. Little did I know, Russ snores like a banshee at night. It was so loud that it woke me out of a dead sleep and I couldn't fall back asleep again. I finally had to steal one of the blankets from our bed, sneak out of the room without trampling any little fingers, and I slept on the floor in an empty bedroom down the hall. It was that bad. So... knowing that we were going to be sharing a tent with Lyndee and the Snore Monster, I made sure I was prepared. I took a melatonin pill (melatonin is a natural substance our bodies make to help us fall alseep) each night before bed, and plugged my ears with my headphones and listened to Native American flute music to put me to sleep each night. And it worked! I only heard Russ snore once the entire trip! :)
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Who in their right minds would camp right underneath the flight path for Sea-Tac International Airport??
Well, I'm not sure if we were in our right minds, but we did it. We heard airplanes all day and all night. |
Day 6 - Seattle
Monday, we planned on spending the in downtown Seattle, and that's just what we did!
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| Ben took this awesome picture on our way into Seattle |
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| Safeco Field! The Yankees were playing that night, and we could definitely tell by all of the people walking around with fan jerseys on. |
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| Seattle! |
We went to the aquarium, which was super awesome! I had so much fun seeing all of the animals! My favorites were probably the seals, sea lions, and otters. Loved them!
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| Tidal pool |
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| We were allowed to touch the animals living in the tidal pools! These starfish were pokey, unlike the slimy ones we caught while we were crabbing. |
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| Jellyfish1 |
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| This guy was huge! |
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| It's Dory!! :D |
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| Lion Fish |
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| Oh look, it's Nemo too! |
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| I took about a bajillion pictures of this guy.. he just wouldn't hold still! |
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| This is what he really looks like. :) |
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| Baby salmon! |
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| So. |
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| Stinking. |
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| CUTE!!! |
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Ahh... I just couldn't get enough of these guys!
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| And I can't ever get enough of this guy! |
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| Sleeping river otters |
We had lunch at Ivar's. I had a friend at work suggest it to us, because she served her mission in Seattle. She said the food was awesome, and she was totally right!
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| We had fish n' chips, oysters n' chips, and a side of calamari. |
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And we made lots of friends!
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| <3 |
After lunch, we headed to Pike Place Market. It was really neat!
This fish shop is really neat. When someone buys something, they have chants that they shout, and they throw fish at each other. It's really entertaining, and these guys are really talented to catch such slippery flying objects!
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| Family! (Minus Brittnae.. :( We missed you! ) |
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| This made us smile. :) |
Pike Place Market was incredible, and we didn't have as much time as I would have like to wander around and see all of the cool shops. I hope we can go back again someday!
After we left Pike Place, we headed over to a family member's house (Roy Mann) for dinner and to hang out some more after the reunion was over!
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| We saw this sign on the way. |
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| Ella fell asleep, and Ben decided to have some fun. She has a dried apricot in her right hand, a chip in her mouth, and a toothpick in her left hand. When she woke up she was thoroughly confused. |
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| We passed an accident on our way. |
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| I found it interesting that their ambulances are red, just like the fire trucks! |
Day 7&8 - Homeward Bound
The trip home was long and stressful. We drove to Three Island Crossing State Park in Idaho on Tuesday and spent the night there. That night, after the boys had gone to bed in their tent, and we were almost settled into our beds in our tent, we heard some rustling around outside and then Matt say, "Mom, there's something outside our tent!" We looked, and it was Ben, poking around the tent with his foot. He kept doing it, and the boys started to get pretty scared. We kept telling them nothing was there, and to go to bed. After a few minutes, Ben came into the tent, but Matt was still convinced an animal was out to get them. He kept calling to his mom, and Lyndee kept telling him to go to bed (and was trying so hard not to laugh!). At one point he poked his head out of the tent with his knife in his hand. Lyndee and Russ told him to put the knife away and to go to bed. Finally he was convinced, and went to sleep. I'm pretty sure he still thinks there was a bear or something outside his tent. :)
The next day we drove all the way home. On Wednesday, we blew a second tire on the truck in northern Utah somewhere. We stopped, put on the spare, and were on our way. Then, just outside of Cedar, the tire we had bought in Burley, ID went flat. We got to Walmart just in time to buy a tire from them before they closed. We were all ornery and stressed and just wanted to be home, and there was some tension in both of our vehicles. But, we all made it home in one piece, nobody died (or was murdered), and we all still love each other. Success, right??
Just a few quotes that went down in history on our Washington trip:
"Take off, hoser!" - Everyone
"Squid are the moths of the sea" - Ben
Brandon: "Look at that armored car!"
Russ: "That's a street sweeper."
Jess: "I'm throwing a tantrum!"
Lyndee: "You need lessons. Ella, will you teach Jessica how to throw a tanrum?"
Ella: "No, not right now."
