Spring Break 2015 Sun March 8, 2015

After not as much sleep as any of us wanted, we got up at 8 (6am), got dressed for the day and headed down to what turned out to be a very good breakfast in the lobby.  It took us all a while to get going but I was feeling anxious because today was/is literally the only day in our remaining trip that doesn’t have significant rain in the forecast.  We entered the park around 10am and Nick went into the Visitors Center to get a map, pay, and let them know that a family of four would be hiking a slightly remote, 8 mile hike!  Several surprising things to learn – all of the roads that had been closed due to the weather, had re-opened 2 days before, there were a bunch a bear sightings on the hike we were about to take and the park was free to enter.  That was so surprising because the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited of all national parks.  We were redirected out of the main entrance and drove to a little bit east to the Greenbrier entrance.  Our instructions were: drive to the dead end and you’ll see the trailhead.  So we drove a little ways (shorted than we thought we should have driven) and saw the “trailhead”.  We got all off our gear on (the kids got new hiking packs and hats for the day) and were about to take off when Ryan said, “You can drive across this bridge.” And then Grant said, “Which was is the trail? This looks like a road.”  Oops!  Both kids were right.  The trailhead was still several miles east.  Whew – that would have made for a REALLY long hike.   

So we got back into the car and drove a few more miles to the real dead end of the road and set off at 10:50 (only 2 hours and 50 minutes later than I’d wanted to because I’d heard that this hike could take up to 9 hours).  

 

We’d been told that the first 3 miles were fairly easy and the last mile was like hiking up boulders.  Well I took “easy” to mean flat and that wasn’t the case.  There was a total elevation change of 1,800 feet.  But the hike was AMAZING!   There were two log bridge crossings, one of which even scared me – railing on only one side…easy enough for a 7-year-old to slip right through and crash into a raging rocky river below.  

 There was 3-5 water crossings that had no bridge at all and those were really exciting too.  We drank some cold water from a small water fall.  Oh and there was ice and snow everywhere which added to the experience.  We had to be very careful in places, where we stepped.  We saw small waterfalls all along the way and several of them were frozen over.  We even saw ice crystals in the mud.  Along the way we sang the “Nonsense Song” over and over so that the kids could learn the lyrics – the song that starts, “Oh one night one morn when I was born and the whistles went toot toot.”

 

We arrived at the very top 4 hours later and man was it worth it.  When we got to the top it brought tears to my eyes.  It was magnificent…and cold…we ate a picnic lunch and could feel the mist of the falls on our faces.   

We shared summer sausage, crackers, cheese and bananas.  And we used a boulder for a table and other rocks were our chairs.  Half of the falls were frozen.  A fellow hiker showed us a picture of the falls from two weeks prior and they were completely frozen over.  I should have mentioned that the winter of 2015 has been one of the coldest, snowiest and iciest in history over all of the United States.  Oh – the trail was called Ramsey Cascades and the falls that we hiked back to are the tallest falls in the Smoky Mountains. 

After a short lunch and nice chats with the people around us (Jim from Ohio stopped us and said that he and his wife used to take trips with their kids like ours and that seeing the 4 of us eating was very emotional for him. 

We hit the trail again, this time to head back, and it was much easier.  I’d told the kids that there would be “awards” for the person with the least number of injuries and despite this, Grant kept running down ahead of us.  At one point he fell and scraped himself and we rounded the corner and saw him getting up so he said, “I’m not injured.  That was just a really good learning experience for me.”  SO FUNNY. The boys took several pee breaks on the way back, only one of which I captured on film:

We finished the hike 6 hours and 15 minutes later, at around 5:15 and we celebrated.

We went back to the Visitors Center to get hat pins, etc. but it had closed at 5:00 so we drove a very short distance back into Gatlinburg (our motel, the Hampton Inn, is about 1 mile from the main entrance).  We ate a very mediocre, overpriced dinner at The Parks Grill.  One funny thing happened at dinner:  Grant ordered a small steak off the kids’ menu and the waitress asked him how he wanted it cooked.  He said, “Hmm, I guess in pieces?”  Laster he said he thought she asked him how he wanted it cut but regardless, it was adorable.  After dinner we headed “home” for showers, a few games of gin and then bed.  Truth be told, I didn’t even type this up today.  I typed it the next morning at breakfast!

National Park #12 - (Spring Break '15) Sat March 7, 2015

We got up this morning at 3:30 and were on the road by 4:15.  I think this was our earliest start ever.  We rented a nice Kia minivan and I am so glad we did – it’s brand new and so spacious.  We got to Texarkana around 7am and ate breakfast at an IHOP.  The plan had been for the kids to fall right back asleep in the car but of course, they did not.  After a good breakfast, it was on to Memphis via Little Rock.  The kids watched Big Hero 6, read books and worked activity books.  Grant and I played the license plate game too. We had lunch around 12:30 at a Subway on the East side of Memphis then stopped again in Nashville for gas.  We stopped at a nice big truck stop and ran some sprints down the side of the parking lot.  We got back into the car and headed on towards Knoxville.  The kids watched Maleficent and watched Big Hero 6 again.  Grant explained to me that he was an outrovert and Ryan was just an all-around trooper. 

About 30 minutes before we pulled into a Panera in Knoxville for dinner, Grant fell asleep and was none too happy to be woken up so he pouted in the corner of the restaurant while the three of us ate.  At this point is was 8:00 due to the time zone change.  We had one last stretch to drive to Gatlinburg and holy cow, all the things to do between Knoxville and Gatlinburg (Pigeon Forge – home of Dollywood) is amazing.  There must have been 10 different go-kart ride places, countless miniature golf, etc.  We pulled in around 9:15 which, because tonight is the daylight savings time shift, was actually 10:15.  So we drove from 4:15am to 10:15pm. 

Ryan went with me to the exercise room and we walked on treadmills.  I think we all finally fell asleep around 11 or 11:30…so late!

Overall, it was a great road trip.  I’m so glad we rented a car though because, I’m not sure if it was due to the terribly cold weather/snow/ice the whole country has been experiencing but the potholes in the highway were like nothing I have ever seen. 

Oh and right after dinner, we passed by the University of Tennessee and there was the most beautiful full, dark orange moon.  By the time we got to Gatlinburg, it was still full but was no longer orange.  I’m not sure what caused it.

Very glad to be here and very nervous that all the roads in the national park may be closed tomorrow!

Washington National Parks - Day 10 - August 18, 2014

Day 10: August 18, 2014:

Well this was the last day but I have to blog because the coolest thing happened.  We got up around 6:30 and I decided, quite on the fly, to just take a quick 25 minute walk because I have a 2014 exercise streak going (25 minutes at least, of exercise every day) and I would otherwise have to walk the airport.  I headed down the street from our motel, towards Ecola State Park and then walked past Les Shirley Park.  Then at the last minute decided to walk up the steep hill at the end of the street, not sure of what was at the end of it.  To my surprise, a herd of six elk were at the end of it – two male, four female.   

I got within 10 yards of them and took their picture.  It was truly amazing.  They were eating the bushes by some condos.  I texted Nick, who had been on a mission the entire trip to spot Elk, and he and Grant came running down.   

They only caught a glimpse of two of them as the sprinkler system had come on and scared them off.  But it was truly one of those small, miraculous moments in life, as was my final view of the coast...

We got in the car a little before 8:00am and drove four hours to the Seattle airport.  We stopped at a Starbucks along the way and grabbed lunches for the airport.  After checking in, we ate lunch at the gate then boarded the plane.

Much to my surprise, our flight attendant was a friend of mine from College, Janice Coffee.  She lived with Mary Weir Mary’s sophomore year.  She remembered me and was so kind.  She brought the kids cookies, free snack packs and at the end, gave them little passbooks signed by the pilots, and the pilots let them go up into the cockpit and have their picture taken.  It was awesome.   

I said something like, “Wow guys.  This is so cool.  I’m 40 years old and haven’t ever done that.”  Attention Bucket List:  check!  The pilot let me get in next.  It was totally cool.  

We got back to our car via the Parking Spot shuttle then drove home via the Taco Cabana drive through.  The diet starts tomorrow!  The house and pool were in decent shape.  Life will be back to normal once Nick and the kids get Hooper from the vet tomorrow morning. 

What a trip.  I can’t believe at ages 6 and 8, my kids have been to 11 national parks.  So glad we are doing this as a family.  This is my favorite thing in the world and I’m so proud of those damn kids!!!

Washington National Parks - Day 9 - August 17, 2014

Day 9: August 17, 2014:

We slept in a little bit this morning – 7:10am? Ryan and I worked on the puzzle a bit more then I went for a 4 mile run while the kids and Nick went down to the playground and skate park.   

Man my legs were so sore from all that hiking that I couldn’t make the whole run without walking for part of it.  But along the walk I got to eat 3 wild blackberries just randomly growing on the side of the road.  We all made it back to the house, had lunch then got in the car and headed south.  Before we hit Girbaldi (a town on the way) I reminded Grant that there would be a white G up on the side of a hill.  We made a big joke about the name of the town and renamed the town Gerbil and made up some funny country lyrics and sang it with a nice twang.  The kids were hitting each other the whole way down (not uncommon) and I got sick of telling them to stop so Nick and I just declared that they could beat the hell out of each other.  Wow.  It got bad.  Ryan hit Grant so Nick told him to defend himself and hit her back so she hit back as hard as she could and that was it – total mayhem.  Both kids were screaming, crying and we were getting lectured on what bad role models we were.  Ryan told us she hated us both and on and on and on.  I honestly was trying as hard as I could not to crack up.  But I must say that the fighting stopped.   

We drove 8 or so miles south of Tillamook to the Munson Creek Falls.  The hike itself was only ¼ mile back but it was closed off and we couldn’t get the same great view of the falls that we’d gotten the other time we’d done the hike, either 2 or 3 years ago.  The falls are supposedly 300+ feet tall, making them the longest waterfalls in all of Oregon.  Very hard to believe.  

We then headed over to Cape Mears and saw the Octopus tree again.  It was about 20 degrees cooler up there, windy, foggy and raining so the kids and I were freezing.  After the Octopus tree, the kids and I got into the minivan and waited for Nick to go check out the Cape Mears light house, then it was on to Tillamook.

Oh my gosh, it was crowded – crazy crowded.  They weren’t even “making” cheese while we were there so rather than wait in a 30 minute line for ice cream we just headed back towards Cannon Beach.  Grant was so upset that he started crying but then fell asleep.  We did find a place to stop in Rockaway Beach, another Picnic Basket candy store just like in Cannon Beach so we stopped and all got Tillamook ice cream.  It was very nice. 

We drove back up the coast to Cannon Beach and are now packing up and running one final load of laundry before we head to dinner.  More to come….

We ate at Tom’s Fish & Chips.  It had been opened for 2.5 weeks and it wasn’t too bad.  We all got burgers and fries.  The kids walked down to Bruce’s candy store one last time, all by themselves and were very proud of that. 

We watched a little bit of Frozen and went to bed.

Washington National Parks - Day 8 - August 16, 2014

Day 8: August 16, 2014:

Today was much more low key than any day we’ve had yet.  We got up early, as usual, then walked down to Haystack rock (which from our room was about 1.5 miles one way).  The kids played in the sand and we looked at the tide pool life a bit.   

I’d heard that there was some disease that had killed out 60% of the Washington and Oregon starfish population but man it looked more like 90%.  I saw only two starfish whereas last year, there were hundreds.

We got back to the room, had lunch then headed up to Seaside for a visit to the toy store.  Grant got a joke kit – whoppie cushion, fake ketchup, pretend bloody finger, hand buzzer, etc. and Ryan got a cute little stuffed animal with big eyes and a rainbow tail and some moustache erasers.  I got an awesome 1,000-piece puzzle, as usual, then we went to the arcade and blew $20 on the fun pyramid game, Fruit Ninja, ski ball and who knows what else. 

After that we just came back to the room and worked the puzzle and watched some movies – Wreck-it Ralph, Soul Surfer and The Lorax.  We had lunch and dessert in the room then Nick took the kids back down to the playground for a bit while I obsessively tried to finish the puzzle in horrible lighting, on the floor of the living room. 

 Ryan helped me a lot but we gave up at around 9:45 and she went to bed.

Certainly our slowest day of the trip but still very nice.  It’s hard to believe we only have one more day here.  It’s been so fun.