It started before we even made it to Dana's house. On the way home, we stopped at the Hagerman fossil beds. The beds themselves weren't that impressive,
but the visitor's center was fun nonetheless. We also passed the Oregon Trail. 
So, naturally, we took a picture.Our first day home was Father's Day.
We had a good time hanging out with Dana's Dad and meeting our new niece, Natalie.
Our next outing was to the Ridgefield wildlife refuge with Steen, Katie, and the kids.
We saw a train and got eaten alive by mosquitoes. After that we visited with Steen and Katie at their house.
We really wanted to go to the beach, so we went out to Fort Stevens to visit the Peter Iredale.
Elina came with us. This is me being gollum, and Elina being afriad.
Do you blame her? We also went to the barracks and found a pretty tree frog.
Then we went to Fort Clatsop 
where Elina and Dana felt the need to exit the boardwalk and impersonate Lewis and Clark. 
Don't they look epic? We also had just enough time to stop at the Astoria collunm before heading home.
Dana has been telling me about the Portland Zoo for a while, so we went this trip home. I loved the petting zoo.
But the bald eagle enclosure was also impressive.
We saw so many cool animals, we could do a post just on that. But we're not going to.We also happened to be in town for Grant Cowie's wedding reception. I took a picture of Dana with the happy couple.
Dana told his lab that he would look for some bugs that live in some caves up here in Washington. So we took a camping trip! Anton and Elina came with us. We hiked in the ice caves
that first afternoon and then set up camp, complete with smores.
The next day we went back to the ice cave, checked out a collapsed lava tube that made some cool arches, a pretty lake, and made a final stop at Panther Creek Falls. We actually climbed down to the base of the falls, something I had never done before. 
It was really hard! But totally worth it.
The handsome troupe:
We made it home in time to have dinner at Steen and Katie's.
We always have fun together.The next thing Dana wanted to do was go to the Ape caves up near Mt. Saint Helens.
Hiking the caves took longer than we expected, but they were cool and fun. The hardest part was an 8 foot cliff we had to scale. Here is Elina standing in front of it. And Dana coming up...
The cave had some other weird formations, like this poop formation.
Weird. And, because I seem to have to squeeze into tight spots... 
After we got out of the cave, we drove out to the mud flows and got some great views of the mountain. 
It was a busy trip and we were glad to see everyone :-)
1 comment:
Wow that looked like a fun trip!! You did tons of stuff that's amazing, you guys are gweat!
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