Track Season - Alyssa

Alyssa decided to run track for Lehi High School this year. She could have stuck with her middle school track team, but we encouraged her to go with the high school team. We knew there would be better coaching there and the high school team also offered the option to run hurdles. She has really long legs so we thought it would be a good event for her. It was hard for her to go in there as a freshman, knowing that she was going to have the slowest times of anyone. But she improved so much over the season. She had the benefit of a small track team, as well, which put her on varsity for her freshman year. Her favorite event was the long jump. She achieved her goal of breaking 14 feet at her very last track meet. Her other main event was the 300 m hurdles. Her first run was around 1 min 7 seconds and by the last track meet, she got down to 57 seconds(I think - it has been a few months, so I am having trouble remembering the details).

She had an awards night after the season was over. We didn't expect her to earn any awards. They gave one out for most dedicated, which I felt like she should have earned, since she never missed practice and worked so hard all season. She got a participation award, of course. Here she is with the whole track team(distance and sprint).

She was most excited about lettering in her freshman year, though.

The one in the middle is her best friend who runs distance. They had fun doing the season together at Lehi.

Here are a couple of videos of long jump. The 300 m hurdle videos were too long to post.

Oregon Coast Trip - Days 7-9 - Crater Lake and Driving Home

We didn't do much research for Crater Lake before we went there. We knew it was a national Park and that National Parks can get really crowded, so we made plans to get there as early as possible. We also got a hotel in a small town about a half hour away from Crater Lake so that we could have the whole day there. If we could go back in time, we would have done things a little differently that day. But we still really enjoyed crater lake and the weather couldn't have been more perfect. 

We entered Crater Lake National Park through the north entrance. The roads were not well marked and GPS lead us to a turn off that was a dirt road with hardly enough room for one car to fit through the trees. We did not take that road, but turned around and went on the turn off that was paved and looked a bit more traveled. We were happy to find this sign along that road.

Crater Lake has a road that goes all the way around the rim. Because it was spring, half of the rim drive was closed(still covered in snow). We knew nothing about Crater Lake before we got there, except that it is the deepest lake in North America. That day, we learned that crater lake is actually a collapsed volcano. Witches island, visible in most of our pictures is still an active volcano that could erupt. There is another volcano tip under the water that could also erupt. So the lake changes throughout time. Crater Lake also has no water source. All of it's water comes from rain and snow melt. That is why it is so blue. We decided that this means there are no fish in the lake. Our first view of the lake was indescribable. The like was as smooth as glass and the reflections of the opposite rim and bright blue sky were amazing. Alyssa was scared to go near the lake because of her fear of deep water and heights so she stayed in the car for this first stop.

We had bought lunch from subway that morning and had a little picnic on the rim. The bugs were annoying, most of all to Alyssa and Tyler, but the view was amazing. After lunch, we took this picture. The water got a little more choppy as the day went on. so it wasn't nearly as clear as the first shot.

We walked along the rim trail for a bit, but decided not to try the moderate hike that would take us up to a higher viewpoint. Here is another photo bomb from the trip. :)

This was the end of the paved path and the start of the trail to the hike. We stayed here for about 10 minutes and chased a lady away who was sitting near here playing her guitar. We saw her in another spot playing on the way back.

One the walk back, Danny went ahead with Ashley and I walked with Alyssa and the boys. At one point, a beetle landed on Tyler's shoulder. It was pretty big, maybe an inch long, and as soon as he saw it, he went ballistic. He was running in circles screaming "There's a bug on me!!" over and over. I found a piece of a pine tree branch, with the needles still on it to use as a little broom, chased Tyler down and brushed it off of him. We had a good laugh about it and continued back to our car. About 5 minutes into the drive, Tyler says "I feel like I still have the bug on me." We laughed about it, but had Alyssa check to make sure he was bug free. When she lifted up the back of his shirt, she went ballistic yelling "Stop the car!" We thought she was messing with us, but quickly decided to take her seriously when we saw the tears in her eyes. Danny pulled over, opened the back door, and removed the beetle from Tyler and the car. We had a good laugh about it afterwards, even though it was not funny to Tyler at the time.

Because half of the rim drive was closed, we ended up finishing at Crater lake in the early afternoon. We pulled up to our hotel around 2:30 with hopes that our room was ready. It was not. They said they needed about an hour. So Danny found a Dairy Queen and we went to get some ice cream. The dining room was not open, though, so we stood in the 100 degree heat in the parking lot to eat the ice cream. It was annoying! We drove around the town a bit and then headed back to the hotel around 3:30. The room was still not ready. Danny had booked a suite with more space and the hotel only had 4 rooms like that. So we unloaded our stuff and sat with it in the air conditioned lobby to pressure them a bit. Alyssa was so embarrassed. They did offer us complimentary drinks(water bottles, Gatorade, Naked brand smoothies, juices, etc.) We finally got up to our room around 4. I took Alyssa to the tennis courts and Danny took the kids swimming. Alyssa and I grabbed dinner at a waffle house(kind of like waffle love, but with even more choices) on the way back to the hotel. There was some excitement in the restaurant while we waited for our food with an irate and probably drunk customer mouthing off to the only waitress in the restaurant that night. Another customer chased the guy out challenging him to a fight. There were many 4 letter words spoken in the exchange. Alyssa and I were happy to get our food and get out of there. Needless to say, we were not impressed with Klamath Falls, OR.

We decided to drive all the way home the next day. Originally, we were going to split the drive between 2 days, but most of us just wanted to get home and not have to sleep in a hotel one more night. It was about a 10 hour drive. Amazingly, we hit our first rainfall of the trip about an hour from home. We drove right through the town we had picked out for lunch, without seeing any place worth stopping. So we had a late lunch in the next town, 40 minutes down the road and ended up eating pizza in a gas station restaurant. But the owner told us we didn't have to wear masks, so that was a plus. The pizza wasn't bad for a gas station. The drive was long and hard on all of us and we were so happy to pull into our driveway around 9 that night and sleep in our own beds.

 

Oregon Coast Trip - Days 4-7 - The Coast

We arrived at our vacation rental, in Pacific City, on Sunday afternoon. We decided to check and see if we could get in a couple of hours early. We were relieved to have the door open for us. We unloaded our car and got settled. We ate our car snacks and the rest of our donuts for lunch. Alyssa helped me with a grocery run which we could not avoid doing on Sunday. It's just the way the days worked out. Our house was the perfect size for our family and everyone was SOOO happy to be able to spread out a little more than our hotel rooms had allowed so far. There were also games and toys in the house.

Everyone loved having a hot tub in the backyard. We enjoyed it so much that we are considering putting one in our own backyard.

After the house was equipped with groceries, and we had eaten, we took a walk to the beach. 

Out of all of the beaches we visited during this trip, we liked this beach the best. It had soft sand, our very own haystack rock(probably called something else here), big sandy hills to run down and it was only about a 1/4 mile walk to get there. We were there a little early for sunset, so we made plans to return the following night closer to sunset so we could watch the sun set over the ocean. We didn't time it right, because Alyssa also wanted to run down the huge sand hill and we didn't think she would have time to do that and see the sun set. So we split up and I ran with her over to the sand hill while the others sat on the beach to wait for sunset.

She made it to the top of the sand hill, ran down and then we ran back up to watch the sunset. This was our view.

And here was the view that Danny and the other three kids had.

We stuck around a little while after sunset to tack some fun pictures.

We tried to get a jumping one, but we just couldn't get the timing right. This was our best attempt out of about 6 tries.

On Monday morning, we headed down to Lincoln City. We were able to drive our car right onto the beach here and we happened to be there for low tide so we could enjoy the tide pools.

Ashley was the only one brave enough to go into the cold water, at least with her whole body. The rest of us dipped our legs in. I helped the boys build a sand castle. It was a bit breezy, so we got cold, plus we were hungry, so we only stayed at the beach for a couple of hours. 

The tide rolled in and destroyed our sand castle right before we left.

On Tuesday Morning(June 1 - Tyler's Birthday), we decided to drive up north to see some of the coastal cities there. We headed straight up to Ecola State Park. I had planned an easy 3 mile hike along the beach, but after we started the hike we learned that it was definitely NOT easy. It was steep, and long, and not what we were in the mindset to attempt(except for Alyssa). The views were pretty amazing, though.

This is Indian Beach. The sign said that "Twilight," "Point Break," and a couple of other movies that I can't remember right now were filmed here. 

There was a viewpoint to see a lighthouse out in the water along the way. 

After Ecola State Park, we headed to Cannon Beach. We were hungry and had packed a lunch in our cooler. So we hauled the cooler out onto the beach. The kids were introduced to eating food with sand while at the beach. They had not had years of practice, like Danny and I, of learning not to stick your hands in the sand while eating. It was also breezy which made eating difficult. After eating, the kids went out to the water to play(they were not in swimsuits and ended up wet and sandy). Danny took the cooler back to the car and the rest of us walked down the beach to see the famous Goonies haystack rock. There were also tide pools here, but there were nature conservationists guarding the tide pools and you could not touch anything, or even step on any rocks

After Cannon Beach, we got back in the car and continued south. Our next destination was Tilamook to tour the cheese factory, but we made a stop in the city of Wheeler on the way for a quick picture.

We also stopped to get a picture at this pull out with an amazing view of the coastline.

It was hard to convince Alyssa to get in our picture because of her fear of heights, but she did it for the 2 seconds it took to take the picture.

Tilamook was a lot of fun. We started with the self guided tour of the cheese factory and learned all about how they make cheese. The machines were pretty cool looking.

We had to wear face masks, because Oregon was still very much going through the pandemic. Alyssa was struggling with the masks and the slow moving people ahead of us, so she skipped out on the tour and got in ice cream line for us. The ice cream was really good. We also stopped in the gift shop and bought some cheese for dinner and cheese curds to try and snack on.

That night, we celebrated Tyler's birthday by eating sweet pork(his request), going in the jacuzzi, and roasting s'more's over a campfire. We also got him some of those pink frosted sugar cookies at the store(they did not have any cupcakes or cakes). They loved going in the spa, jumping out to eat a s'more, and then going back into the spa. We finally called it a night around 10:20pm.

On Wednesday, We had to pack up the car again and leave our spacious and super fun house. We had kind of a late start to our day and we were still loading up when the cleaners showed up 15 minutes after check out time. We spent the day exploring some of the highlights of the coast south of Pacific City. Our first stop was in Depoe Bay. This was supposed to be a spot where you could spot whales close to the shoreline. The day was quite foggy(more like we pictured the Oregon Coast to be-I think we were really luck with the weather we had had up to this point) so we couldn't see very far out into the water.

We walked over to the whale watching center, but it was closed, probably due to COVID, so we walked across the street to use the restroom, buy some salt water taffy, and buy some souvenir shirts, sweatshirts, toys, and jewelry. We probably should have grabbed lunch here to, since we discovered the options were lacking as we drove down the coast. We could have eaten at the Sea Hag's Restaurant...:) 

After Depoe Bay, our next stop was the Devil's Punchbowl. We didn't come at the best viewing time. I think it is most spectacular when it is high tide and sunset. We were there at low tide and in the middle of the day. 

After the Devil's Punchbowl, we headed to Yaquina Head Lighthouse National Refuge. We were glad to have our national parks pass to get us in. This was a fun stop. We started by walking out to the light house.

I don't have a picture of it, but there was this huge haystack rock in the water with hundreds of puffins on it(the penguin looking birds that fly). As we walked back to the car, we noticed a bunch of sea lions laying on the rocks below.

There were stairs that went down to some more tide pools, so we went down to explore them. These also had nature conservationists guarding them, but their rules were more relaxed than the ones at Cannon beach. They wanted us to stay off of rocks with muscles on them but we could gently touch the sea creatures. There were some pretty anemones.

And really big ones, too.

Yaquina Lighthouse was our last stop. Well, actually we made one more stop at the sea lion caves, but did not want to wait in the long line and pay the $20 entrance fee each to see them, so I just took a quick picture of the coastline and we continued on our way. 

I think this picture sums up the coastline perfectly. There were miles of sandy beaches, but there were also some very mountainous coastal areas. We would be driving through thick fog and then go inland a quarter of a mile and it would completely clear up. We were so sad to leave the coast and head inland. It was so beautiful and peaceful there. Our next destination was Sutherlin, OR.