What I Did this Summer Part 2

August brings two more of my favorite traditions: Canoe Trip and our annual family camping trip.

The Canoe Trip is one of our annual youth group events. On Thursday afternoon we load up all our gear and  head to the Santiam River. We spend the next 3 days canoeing and the next 3 nights camping on the riverbank. On Saturday we merge into the Willamette and on Sunday afternoon we pull out in Independence.  This was my seventh Canoe trip and I have amazing memories (both good and bad) from the last six. This was (like camp) kind of a bittersweet year. A handful of people that have been going on canoe trips longer than I, were unable to make it this year and I had to find myself a new canoe partner (I've had the same one for the last three years) and I wasn't super excited about this. But the trip turned out great. I got to spend 4 days in a canoe with one of the sweetest girls alive, the sun shone brightly on us, and I didn't tip my canoe. We did discover after our Friday night bath/swim that there are leeches in the river...who knew?

(Notice that I am now inserting picture into my blogs. Yes, I WILL get the hang of this!)

Less than two days after canoe trip, my family headed out on our annual camping trip. We've spent a little more than a week at Ft. Stevens State Park every summer for 31 years! For those of you that have never been there I highly recommend it! Ft. Stevens is full of history from the Civil War all the way up to WWII, also near by is Ft. Clatsop if Lewis and Clark is more your area of interest. There's so much to see and do if you enjoy history. And if you don't enjoy history there's miles of bike paths and trails, a lake, the ocean, and you're close to Astoria and Seaside. We never run out of things to do. 

Just to be clear, I  LOVE  CAMPING!!! In fact, there are few things I love more than sitting around a campfire and sleeping in a tent. There's just something about it that makes me happy. Actually, I'm pretty sure I would be content living in a tent most of the time and my sleeping bag is good down to 15 degrees so at least in Oregon I probably could do it year round...hmm, something to think about...

For the first 5 days it was just myself and my parents and since we've seen everything many times we take advantage of the time to simply relax. This usually means one fairly long bike ride during the day and then just sitting around camp reading, sleeping, and playing games. My brother and his family were able to join us for the last 4 days. Unfortunately, the day they arrived was the day it started raining. It's hard to camp with 7 little ones when it's pouring rain. Solution: turn the cargo trailer into a movie theater - problem solved! Thankfully, God answered our prayers and the rain stopped that night and the next day was gorgeous. 

One of our yearly traditions is to spend one morning in Seaside. We have breakfast at Pig n' Pancake and then go ride the Bumper Cars and the Tilt-A-Whirl while the abundant breakfast is still sitting heavily in our stomachs. This is one of the places that helped me develop my love of rides early in life and now I get to watch my nieces and nephews laugh hysterically while they get sick to their stomachs. It doesn't get much better than that! 

A new favorite activity (and hopefully future tradition) that we discovered this year was marshmallow guns. A simple design out of PVC pipe and a bag of mini marshmallows creates hours of entertainment...and several bouts of tears. You'd be amazed at how much a marshmallow in the eye can hurt. I even ended up with a couple of slight bruises on my arm from some of dads especially powerful shots. But, all in all, the kids loved it...okay the adults loved it just as much if not more than the kids (and we cried less). In fact I'm pretty sure Dad, Matt, and I were the last ones battling it out up at the lake.

So that was my summer in a nutshell. Lots of fun had, lots of memories made, and now, back to life...sigh...