Saturday, May 31, 2008

Camping with kids


Last night we took Craig’s kids camping for the first time. We went to Grime’s Creek which is near Idaho City. We had a fantastic time doing several traditional, cheesy camping activities. We threw rocks in the river, made a smoky pine needle fire, roasted marshmallows…and dropped them in the dirt, ate smores, the boys peed in the river, went for a hike, and slept semi well and semi coldly in the beautiful, quiet, peaceful wilderness. It was really fun and about 100 times more pleasant than I thought camping with the kids would be. So fun, in fact, that I’d call the weekend nearly perfect even when taking today’s emergency room trip and stitches into consideration.


Last night we took Craig’s kids camping for the first time. We went to Grime’s Creek which is near Idaho City. We had a fantastic time doing several traditional, cheesy camping activities. We threw rocks in the river, made a smoky pine needle fire, roasted marshmallows…and dropped them in the dirt, ate smores, the boys peed in the river, went for a hike, and slept semi well and semi coldly in the beautiful, quiet, peaceful wilderness. It was really fun and about 100 times more pleasant than I thought camping with the kids would be. So fun, in fact, that I’d call the weekend nearly perfect even when taking today’s emergency room trip and stitches into consideration.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Road Trip!


Sometime last year in the middle of Craig's toughest semester, we decided to plan a vacation that'd we'd take after his graduation--partially as motivation to get him through the tough moments. Several hot tub sessions, spreadsheets and weeks later, we decided that it would be really fun to take a road trip in Penny.

We planned out this fabulous trip that would take us 2500 miles from Boise, through Utah to the Grand Canyon, to LA, Las Vegas and back to Boise.

Craig spent three nights putting in a subwoofer, after all, you can't spend 49 hours in a car without mind blowing tunes. We packed everything snuggly into Penny's cabinets and drawers which was so exciting since we'd never before fully utilized her built-in storage space. Craig and were so happy with our impecible preparation. Our campsites were reserved, our daily routes were mapped and printed, our neighbor was ready to take care of our garbage, mail, house and cat, and we were stoked to get going.

We headed out on our potentially awesome (albeit ambitious) road trip. Craig--who is always the pilot--was ready for a good 8 hour stretch of driving. We got 5 miles out of town and realized that, while we'd considered the fact that we'd have to take it easy so that Penny wouldn't overheat, we didn't realize just how much hotter Penny would run in the summer (we bought her in October). We got several miles out of town and Penny's engine temperature had reached 245 (warranty is void at 250) so we pulled over into a rest stop to consider our options. We were both upset and frustrated. We pulled the engine cover off to let Penny's engine cool down and amid our frustration, Craig said--wait--just how many miles did we make it? We checked the odometer and discovered that we had made it a whopping 15.6 miles of our grand road trip. At this point, the irony was too much and we both burst out laughing.


To make a long story short, we decided that if we had to make the trip in 15 mile intervals, stopping one hour between each leg to cool down, it would take us approximately 3 weeks to get to SLC (okay, we didn't really do the math). We decided instead to fly to LA and then drive to Las Vegas. Our trip turned out fabulously, and while it was much less secluded and grass-root-esque than our originally scheduled trip, and we were, for a while ready to give Penny away to the highest...or lowest...or really ANY bidder, after talking to our mechanic and getting some new tips, we have renewed faith in her and we are ready to take another trip up to Kirkham next week.
Somewhere in the Lake Mead Recreation Area
Craig's improv version of a road trip...airport video games.

At the Las Vegas temple.

A mine we hiked to in Nevada.