For Ashley's Senior trip, she wanted to go to a beach in an area of the country that we hadn't been to before...and she wanted to bring our dog with us. Traveling with a dog took a lot more planning and it limited some of the things we would normally do on a trip. Danny and I worked through some different ideas of where we could go and we settled on Vancouver, British Columbia. It was a long drive, but we planned out some things to see on the drive there and on the drive back home. We left on Friday afternoon (May 29th) and our first stop was Twin Falls, Idaho. We had never been to Twin Falls and the map made it look like not much of a detour from our route. We were excited to see the falls. And they didn't disappoint.
Fortunately, Shoshone Falls was dog friendly. We wouldn't have made this a stop if it wasn't. Lula did not like the metal grated stairs down to the lookout, but she loved the wildlife around us.
The gorge leading away from the falls was pretty incredible, too.
I imagine the Falls are even more impressive in a year when there was actually snowfall and rain. I guess we will stop and look if we are ever passing through again during a wetter year.
We stayed at the falls for maybe 45 minutes. The gnats were pretty annoying, though, so we were ready to go after we had walked to all of the lookouts and gotten some good pictures. The boys were also excited to get back to the hotel to swim.
The first hotel we stayed in was a Holiday Inn Express. I was happy that the pool area also had a hot tub for me to sit in while the boys swam. We were also grateful that the hotel overbooked and didn't have the room available for us that we had originally requested. They gave us 2 rooms with a connecting door instead and we all slept really well that first night.
We got pretty sick of hotel breakfast on this trip, but on day one, we enjoyed the sampling of pancakes, juices, cereals, and assorted bread offerings.
This restaurant was near the hotel, so we passed it a few times and thought it had a funny name.
Ashley has read the entire Michael Vey series in the past year and is obsessed with it. When she heard that we would be passing through Boise/Meridian, she asked us if it would be possible to stop at Meridian High School, since that is where the whole series starts. It wasn't much of a detour, so we made the stop.
For lunch that second day, we picked up take out at Arby's and then took it to a park in a small town in Oregon. We did not realize when we picked the park out that it would be full of squirrels. This is not usually a problem, but Lula has that chase instinct in her and she has not had much experience with squirrels since we don't have many near our house. She could not relax in that park and wanted to chase them the whole time we were there. We had to retrieve the bark collar from the car because she kept barking at the squirrels when we wouldn't let her get them. It was actually hilarious.
We crossed over and went under so many interesting bridges during our trip. This was one of the first that we went over.
Our second night in the hotel, a Comfort Inn and Suites, was not as good as the first night. Danny and I need a somewhat dark room to sleep and Camden and Tyler are used to a lot of light in the room. Ashley had a sleep mask and headphones, so she was good to sleep in any conditions. We convinced the boys that they could sleep in the dark because we were right next to them. But Camden was struggling well into the night. He started crying around midnight because he couldn't sleep. I finally gave him my earbuds with calming music. I thought it was the snoring that was bothering him. It did the job anyways (even though it was the dark) and he finally fell asleep. I don't think I actually got to sleep that night until 1:30 or 2.
We were staying in the Tri Cities area of Washington that night. Danny's niece, Breanna, lives in Kennewick so we planned to meet up with her for dinner. At first, she had picked out a sushi restaurant for dinner, but she said it was pretty small and our group would fill up all of the dinning space in the restaurant. So we went to a pizza place instead. It was good to catch up with Breanna and to meet her boyfriend. She seems really happy.
We got back to the hotel in time for the boys to have another swimming night in the hotel. This pool also had a hot tub, so I went with them again. We decided to go to Sacrament meeting at the local church building before getting on the road. We had 3 or 4 different people approach us to see if we were new or visiting. I think they were all disappointed that we were just passing through.
Danny had picked out a dog friendly beach for us to eat lunch on that day. Since it was Sunday, we packed a picnic lunch ahead of time to eat there. We didn't know before we got there that the parking lot would be a 1/4 of a mile walk from it to the beach through thick trees. As we started walking with our lunch food in hand, Danny started to feel uneasy about our car full of belongings and the overcrowded parking lot. He headed back to the car and the rest of us continued on to the beach.
There were so many dogs on the beach and it did not require leashes, so it was worth the stop. There weren't very many birds for Lula to chase, so she mostly stuck close to us. She got friendly with the group of people next to us, running up to them and letting them pet her, which was surprising. We stayed for about 45 minutes and then headed back to the car. Danny ate quickly and then we were on our way. We arrived at our VRBO around 6pm. Danny and I had to make a quick trip to the local grocery store to get supplies for our 5 day stay there, including stuff for dinner that night and for breakfast the next morning.
Just a quick note about our VRBO. When we were looking for a place to stay in the Vancouver area, we were really struggling to find somewhere that we thought would work for our family. They all seemed so cramped, old, and they all had upstairs or basement tenets. We really wanted our own space. Danny came across this house on the southern tip of this peninsula south of Vancouver. It had a large amount of land around it, was located right on the water, and the best part - no tenets. We had to contact the owners ahead of time because they had a 20-pound maximum on pets staying there. They gave us the ok to stay there with Lula (around 50 pounds) and we are so glad that they did. The house was the best VRBO we have ever stayed in. More pictures and info about it to follow in the next post.
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