Summer Regional

On Sunday we returned from our summer regional, which was in Sunriver this year. John was supposed to be there at 9AM on Friday for meetings, but since that is a 4 hour trip (if no one is carsick) we opted to spend the night out there on Thurs. We have some friends who own a cabin in LaPine, so that worked out great for us. We drove up in the afternoon, and unloaded the van, then loaded the kids back up for another long drive. John has been considering doing the Pacific Crest Half-Ironman next year and wanted to check out the course while we were in the area. The bike course travels along the Cascade Lakes Hwy. What a beautiful drive! The following pictures are all from that drive.

Mt Thielsen (O.k. I lied. This picture is actually from close to Diamond Lake. But it's still pretty.)

Everyone at Wikkiup Reservoir. This is where the swim is, and where the bike starts. It ends at Sunriver .

This is Devils Lake. It is really small but the water was such a gorgeous shade of green! I was standing right on the highway to take this picture.

Jackie didn't want to stand in the snow. She was a little upset from having a snowball thrown at her.

View of Mt Bachelor from the car. We never found any good places to stop the car, so I had to take this one through the windshield. At least no bugs are visible.

Saturday John was in meeting all morning, so I took the kids over to Lava Lands. (I would have gone to the High Desert Museum but, 1: I didn't have quite as much time as I would have like to really see everything there, and 2: it's really expensive.) The kids really enjoyed seeing all the lava rocks and learning about the different formations and how volcano's erupt.

The trail was only1/2 mile, plus we climbed the extra 350 yards to the viewpoint. Boy was that incredible! Barren Lava field as far as the eye can see! Which I thought particularly interesting considering that when we came over the pass from Bachelor the day before, the whole valley was spread out before us and it was forest as far as the eye could see. Not a hint of a lava rock anywhere!

Fortunately for me the kids were not interested in getting anywhere close to the edge! I had to strong arm them all to be in the picture with me. I can't say that I blame them though. It was a long way down!

After the hike we went into the gift shop where I picked up a book. Mom and Dad, you might be interested in this one. It's called "The Creaky Knees Guide. The 80 Best Easy Hikes. Oregon Edition" I bought it because it sounded like they would be good hikes for kids. If an 80yr old can do it then my kids should be able to. Now. Mom and Dad. I'm not suggesting this book because I think you're old. Au Contraire. What I thought, is that you guys like to drive around and discover new places, and the hikes in this book are all short 1/2 day hikes. I'll have to show you the book sometime because it's got a lot of unusual information in it that's hard to describe.

Saturday afternoon we stayed at the resort and played miniature golf with the kids. Sunday we came home. Except for the fact that Jackie wanted to sleep with John and me, so we only got about 4 hours of sleep the entire weekend it was fun. (Now I remember why we have left the kids with relatives in the past!)

John started Junior Golf again yesterday. SO I spent A LOT of time in the sun. Got a little pink but nothing really bad. By the time Sept, comes around, I may actually have a tan!