Deuteronomy 12:5 "But you shall seek the place where the LORD your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His dwelling place; and there you shall go.
We are a family of four that enjoys taking long road trips in the continental US, seeking a place to call home in the next 6-7 years. We will go where God sends us and makes provision for us to go.
Upon waking we all had the same thought in our minds..."Lets go home"! After all we were just six hours and a familiar drive away from being home. We also longed to sleep in our beds at home. We figured we could leave by 5:00 and be home by midnight. But first we wanted to go to the "Kids Fishing Festival". It was free and the Department of Fish and Game had stocked two ponds with big ol' trout! So, off we went with the rest of Mammoth's visitors...hundreds of them! And their kids that have never fished before...all packed into two tiny ponds. Fortunately our kids have fished before and it was pretty easy for them to literally drop their bait in and reel in a fish. Once we returned to the campground, Jeff went ... read more
Being in our old stomping grounds gave us familiarity and an even more longing to be home in Temecula. Rex began to talk about leaving and it was definitely on Jeff's and my minds. But, we had one goal while in Mammoth...TO CATCH FISH (and eat Ice Cream from Mono Cone)! So, out the door we went with fishing poles, bait, and Roxy to Little Virginia Lake north of Mono Lake to our favorite fishing spot. Apparently, it is a LOT of people's favorite spot today as there were tons of people on boats & rafts on the lake and a lot of the shore space was filled up too. But not our favorite spot I guess because its a little hike over rocks and such...but it was not a problem for us just tenderfoot Roxy ... read more
We left Boise at 6:20am and headed toward I95 South through Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada. The drive was loooong and boring! Poor Jeff all he could do is stare at the road, I had my book and the boys had movies. We didn't even stop for lunch we all just ate snacks. When we hit Hawthorn we turned off on Hwy 259 which lead us to the California border and Mono Lake. There was a crazy thunder & lightning storm just to the south of us. Ryan tried to capture the lightning on film but not sure of he was successful. After we turned onto 395 south we passed June Lake and then as we made our way down we could see smoke over Mammoth! We were super concerned that it could be Mammoth on fire, ... read more
We were up early and out the door to Boise State University for our 10:00am campus tour. The campus was very nice, we toured the recreation center with a full gym, indoor track, Olympic pools, outdoor equipment rentals rock wall; we got to check out their football stadium with "blue" AstroTurf, the quad, the student life center, various buildings and a huge lecture hall. W learned about costs and how non-residents can obtain resident tuition and so much more! After we walked across the Boise River (which runs through their campus) through a beautiful park with a rose garden and geese to downtown Boise for lunch. On the way back to the car we walked by Zoo Boise and were surprised to see it only cost $7 to enter...but we just weren't in the mood to ... read more
On the road early for a short drive 2 hours south to Boise. The drive down I55 was pretty, we followed the north fork of the Payette River and saw some pretty crazy upper class rapids. Our campground is just outside Boise in the town called Eagle. We got settled in and then headed into the "big city" of Boise. We navigated through the city streets (lots of one ways) and made it to Boise State University to familiarize us with the area for tomorrow's campus tour. The we headed to the interpretation center of The Perigrine Foundation Birds of Prey Center. The mostly highlighted Falcons and falconry as well as owls, condors and hawks. Their primary focus is to repopulate an endangered species and they have been very successful. It was a neat little trip ... read more
We really feel relaxed today...took us until 12:30 to get out to do something! We loaded up the kayaks and headed over to an area called the Northwest Passage of Payette Lake that leads to Upper Payette Lake. This passage is closed to motorized boats, so only canoes, kayaks and paddle boards. It was a lot like the thoroughfare at Priest Lake so we really hoped we would see some more wildlife. We did see some Osprey, Heron, ducks (Ryan even used his new Wood Duck call and we came across some wood ducks!) and geese, but no mammals :(. The huge trees along the banks were gorgeous, many of them had fallen into the water and we'd have to navigate around them so we wouldn't poke a hole in our kayaks! Truly this was a ... read more
Took a nice long bike ride this morning into the town of McCall over to Payette Lake and then to the McCall Fire Smokejumper and airbase/helibase which is right next to the campground and then to a park along the river. The airbase is very busy as there are several fires burning here in Idaho. Then poor Ryans bike broke as we were just approaching our campground, we will need to find a part in Boise to fix it, so he was pretty bummed. We then ate a bite of lunch and headed over to Ponderosa State Park to do some hiking. We first drove up to Osprey Overlook and enjoyed a view of boaters on and houses along Payette Lake. Then we went to a trailhead called Meadows Marsh to hike as we heard there ... read more
We left Coeur d'Alene at 8:45am and headed south on I95 for nearly 5 hours through beautiful wheat farmland! It was so pretty, the wheat fields were the perfect color of tan and were Perfectly perfectly on rolling knolls. We drove through some timber and the got to the east side of Hells Canyon that ran along the Salmon River that was filled with river rafters. The temperature through the side of Hells Canyon rose to 100 degrees and reminded us how hot it is suppose to be in hell. Thank Jesus that we are not going to hell! We also drove down some incredibly steep grades...we were all stepping on our brake pedals! Eeek! Jeff is such a good driver and we are in such capable hands between his skills and God's care! We eventually ... read more
Our vacation just gets better and The Lord did not disappoint us today! We decided to go kayaking today and in Northern Idaho we had about 1000 choices of lakes, rivers & streams to choose from! But I had read about Priest Lake north of Sandpoint and that it was a beautiful lake and their was a "canoer & kayakers paradise" in an area called the thoroughfare that leads to Upper Priest Lake which is declared a Federally Designated Scenic Area and is restricted from development. We found a great sandy state beach to launch from and headed into the thoroughfare. It was gorgeous and completely flat and we all imagined seeing all kinds of wildlife taking drinks along river water through the lush beautiful wilderness, yet the animal we all longed to see was a ... read more
So, today was probably one of the best days on the Landis Family vacation. We were hoping to take a factory tour at Buck Knives in Post Falls (about 20 minutes west of Coeur d'Alene). The info we had said we needed to make reservations for one of the three tours they offer each day so Jeff called first thing and all of the tour groups were full and they didn't have any space available until next Monday! The boys were very bummed out, but they told us they had a store & small museum we could check out. So we headed over, hoping and praying that maybe someone on the tour would not show up. When we got there we went to the store and found a lot of cool stuff and knives that were ... read more
