The "After The Reunion" Vacation to Crater Lake and Beverly Beach

Connie, Mark and Lee and I went on to Crater Lake from our Axtell Reunion since we were close. Connie and I had been there as kids but (let's get REAL, that was a L O N G time ago) I was amazed at how beautiful it was - look at those colors of blue!!
We decided to go on a 2 hour boat tour of the lake, but we had @ an hour before needing to hike down for that so we snapped some couples pictures.

Connie and Mark had just celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary a few days before.

Some nice lady pulled off the side of the road and offered to take a shot of all 4 of us.

Lee with our tour tickets

Our tour boat. This is one of 3 boats that were helicoptered in for tours. They used to use row boats for the tours, but said they can sometimes have up to 6-8 feet waves at times :0

This isn't the best picture but this orange rock formation is called the "castle" - it really does look like a castle; this picture doesn't do it justice.

Our tour guide

This tree of sorts (they figured) was brought down into the lake during an avalanche, with rocks still in the root system causing it to float in an upright position. They call it "Old Man of the Lake". He goes all over the lake - wherever the wind blows him or the current takes him. It was first noted in 1929, but could have been around before that.

Another castle shot

Phantom Ship close up

Phantom Ship at a distance

There was a hike of a little over a mile (decreasing/increasing @ 1000 feet in elevation) to get to the lake for the tour. This was me and Connie on the trail. In the next couple of days we hiked, biked, shopped (at the gift shop), visited and watched movies in Connie and Mark's trailer - it was a lot of fun and I'm so glad we went :)

Then we went to Beverly Beach. Connie and I thought we would go and play in the waves . . . yeah RIGHT!! The water temperature wasn't too bad at first, but then the deeper you went the more it hurt - yes HURT (we didn't even get to our knees)!! Needless to say we went for a walk instead :)

Lee LOVES his blackberry :)

After our long walk we came back to find Mark freezing to death "~

Lee was fine because he had his blackberry to keep him warm ")

The sunset the first night

Connie and Mark taking a little stroll along the beach the first night

Brrrrrrr!!

Someone was trying to fly this fun kite, but it crashed and burned -

so Lee ran to the rescue and gave it a little toss into the air

I couldn't pass this up - it reminds me of the "footprints" poem

We didn't have as much time as we would have liked here but this is what I feel when I see pictures like this:

Peace

Daisy gets ANOTHER new bed :)

Our Grandma dog, Daisy, seems to be having a bit of dog stress these days; maybe it's all her dog visitors that she's been having that's making her feel out of control, or that she's no longer the "queen bee" of her domain - or maybe it's just that she's getting older - or MAYBE she's going through dog menopause or something, but she decided to chew up her fluffy dog bed that we bought for her new house last December, and scatter the "fluff" all over the place. We bought a new foam bed (no fluff this time) today with a cute dog paw print cover. Nellie had the pleasure of cleaning up the "fluff" and putting her new bed inside her dog castle. It fits quite nicely in her house - hopefully she'll like it enough to leave it alone :).
Good old Daisy!

Girl's Camp 2009 - 4th Year Hike @ Thorp Lake

Miss Nellie ready to go on the big 4th year hike

20 of the 24 girls that went on the hike

We hiked up @ 3 miles and set up camp. We all learned to filter our water, cook on cool camp stoves and eat dehydrated meals in a pouch. We camped Tuesday, Wednesday and went back to Ensign Ranch Thursday afternoon.

This was seriously the view the first morning when I got up - right from our camp site. The lake was so still it was like a mirror.

We went on a day hike Wednesday up to the viewpoint and encountered some snow along the way.

The scenery was breath taking!!

It's crazy to think that 3 weeks prior to this everything was covered in snow; I LOVED all the wildflowers.

Mt. Rainier was beautiful!! How can ANYONE say there is no God? I'm so grateful for the beautiful world He gave us to enjoy and live in.

striking a pose

fellow 4th year hikers

This was her birthday - she said she had never before made a snow angel on her birthday!!

On the trip back down

We made quick work of the down hill snowy areas by doing some fanny sliding ")

a little R & R after the day hike

We got to stop at a little restaurant Thursday on the way back to camp. The girls were so tired of "going" in the woods that they held it for the real bathrooms - which meant that we had to use both of them to accommodate everyone. It was a good thing that there weren't any other people there :0

After we got back to Ensign Ranch the girls got to play on the water slide and ride horses

It was a great experience.