Fourth of July and all that happened thereabouts

We got the chance to go to Vancouver for the Fourth of July. We had a good time watching fireworks, eating fresh blueberries and hanging out with the fam. We even spent a day going up to Mt. Rainier with Anton and Elina. On the way home, we stopped at Bayview, ID to see Ivan and Nancy's condo on the lake. It was beautiful! We spent a day out on the boat rafting and enjoying the beautiful weather. We were sad to come back to work. There are a lot of pictures here. Prepare yourself.
We went for a walk with Dana's dad along the river. The sunset was beautiful. Here it is.

We got to spend some time with Steen and Katie and the kids at Else's house. We had a lot of fun.
Here is Katie with Daniel and Katie with Megan!
Elina and Megan decided to have a small battle. Elina chose an inflated, giant dragonfly. Megan chose a long, whippy stick. Megan won.


Daniel and the moon. I just like this shot. Daniel is such a looker. And here is Daniel with his Farmor, Else.


Next we move to Mt. Rainier. We went to Sunrise and to Paradise as well as reflection lakes, Grove of the Patriarchs and Narada falls. This, however, is just a nice shot of the mountain. . The sight of that much snow was delicious compared to the super hot camping trip in the desert. This is from one of the lakes. It was full of snow. So pretty!

This is the view of the mountain from what they tell me is usually a beautiful meadow covered in wildflowers. It was a steep climb up slushy snow. But the view was great.
There was also a cool river that ran through the rocks. It was basically Little Wildhorse Canyon (see previous post) with water in it. And completely different rocks, of course.

After that we made it to Grove of the Patriarchs, an island protected from forest fires, that houses really big trees. You cross over a little bridge to get to the island. Here is the nice bluegreen water. This is to show you the sheer size of the trees. Mindboggling. And Dana got this pretty picture of mushrooms growing out of one of the dead trees.

We also stopped at a cross section of a really huge tree from the park. It marks rings when certain events happened, like WWI and Columbus' arrival in the New World. Yeah, its that old. And a candid shot for fun.

Narada Falls was really swollen due to the snow melt. Here is my shot from the top, and Dana's from closer to the bottom than the top. .

On the way home, Anton found this pretty field full of wild grasses that you could see the mountain from. Of course, we stopped and took a few more pictures, as if we didn't have enough already.


Here are some pictures of our adventures in Northern Idaho, a new location for me.
This is the view from Ivan and Nancy's condo on the lake. You can see "downtown" Bayview sparkling on the right. We arrived Friday evening and on Saturday we got to go out on their boat onto the lake. Dana got to test out his scuba gear before its big trip to New Guinea. They took us to a skipping rock beach and there was inevitably a contest. (I didn't try after Dana told me I skip rocks like a girl) It was fun to ride the raft, "Big Mable." Nancy also had access to a little cabin right on the lake, only accessible by boat.

Here is a close-up of one of the skipped rocks. And here is the view of the dock from the cabin. Isn't the water a pretty color? The beach of was covered in nugget sized rocks, kind of hard on the feet, but again, really pretty. Here is Ivan and Nancy and their really nice boat. Thanks you guys for taking us out!

Here are a couple of shots of the riders on Big Mable. Dana and I went out twice, and Dana and Ivan went out once. Nancy was a good driver, we had to hang on tight we were laughing so hard.

Here is Dana in his scuba gear. Some Canada geese saw that we were eating tasties and floated over to see what we would give them. We gave them very old soda crackers and some pretzel rods. We got a front row seat to the pecking order. If a goose low on the totem pole accidentally ate some cracker without thinking, he would spit it out, or get GOOSED! We got bored of watching them, and so lured them to one end of the dock, and then Dana leaped at them. Thanks to Ivan, we have a respectable picture of it. On our leisurely ride home, Dana spotted a bald eagle sitting in a tree. Can you see him?