Vacation - Day 1

Okay let me just start by saying never, never rent a car on a Sunday. Not only is there only one car company in town open on Sunday so if it doesn't work out you have no other options, but if for some reason you need to go to the bank, it's closed too. Nuff said about that.

With a comment like the one above you can pretty much sum up that we did not leave on Sunday afternoon as originally planned. We did leave bright and early (okay so not totally early because we did have to go rent another car) on Monday morning.

About a half an hour after we had left I looked in the back seat and found Elisha with his helmet on. We took some baseball gear so he could practice if he wanted to in some of the quieter moments at grandma and grandpa's. He was looking out the window and did not see me so, of course, I had to take a picture. Unfortunately he caught me, but I still think this picture is cute!

And if you take a picture of one kid ya gotta take a picture of the other!

Aww... don't they look so sweet. Too bad they don't act that way when you've traveled for three or four hours! No seriously they were really good... on the way up. On the way back, well, that's another story entirely.

We stopped to eat at a rest area at about 11:30ish near Donner Lake. That's about three hours or so from home so now you know about what time we really left. Anyway, we had company in the form of this furry little fellow and the kids couldn't resist sharing their lunch with him. And I, of course, couldn't resist taking a picture of him either.

The rest area was actually a nice little park with a hiking trail (Glacier Loop Trail) that told the history of the rocks and the formations in the area. Apparently it was all made by glaciers. We walked the little half mile trail since we had more time than we would have, had we left on Sunday. (We stay over night halfway so we don't drive 12 hours straight. Since we didn't leave on Sunday we had more of Monday to travel and take it a little slower than usual. We spent about an hour at this rest area.)

Yohn has this thing about including me in the pictures since I have teased him about not being at a lot of our family outings because there are no pictures of me. So it was his choice to take this picture of me and the kids starting off on the trail.

This is Castle Rock which can actually be seen from the freeway if you were to look up. I just thought it was kind of cool looking and appropriately named.

The sun was very bright, making this picture kind of hard to get. Originally it had Yohn, Elisha and Bethany but Elisha sneezed in the first photo and Bethany got kind of nervous (I really don't know why, since she's usually the one you have to tie down to keep her from climbing all over everything) so after two or three shots here's the best one. I can't remember what this formation is called now but it was a huge area made up of rock with all those large boulders scattered about. It was all formed by glaciers thousands of years ago. Yohn was very impressed with it, thus the pictures had to be taken.

Here's Yohn and Bethany on some more of that rock a little further down the trail. Now she's on the edge looking over about a 20 foot drop and is not nervous at all so I don't know what the fuss was all about before. I thought the lake made a beautiful background in this picture.

We got to the hotel (or the hoe-tail as Elisha says it) at about 4:30ish and had some time to burn before venturing out to find something for dinner. Yohn got me a tripod for the camera so I thought I'd take the opportunity to try it out and get a picture of all four of us for once.

Okay so I used it more than once. We wasted time playing card games together so I guess since we were playing as a family we really weren't wasting time.

After dinner and baths for the kids we spent some time watching baseball and cartoons together before going to bed. No there is not just one bed in the room although it does look that way.

A picture of my kids just before we turned out the lights. Don't let the sweet innocent looks fool you! They got in trouble a few times before they settled down to go to sleep.