I spent the morning with Arya, and then went clothes shopping. It was lovely. I never do this- just relax. =) Around 2pm, I headed towards Chris' work, picked us up coffee on the way. It was 100F outside. I was fairly certain it was hotter in California than it was in Nevada and Arizona. Go figure. Most people were like, "WHY are you going to the Grand Canyon in this heat?!" I dunno, maybe leaving the heat by walking right into damn furnace made some sense? You can't feel a third degree burn because you've fried your nerve endings. We got caught in little bits of rush hour traffic on our way to the Oakland Airport. In short order, we were off. Flight left on time, and it was an easy hour and a half ... read more

My plan that morning had been for everyone to get up and drive out to Bagby Hot Springs. Unfortunately, they were all out later than intended. Chris didn't get home until shortly after midnight which meant he had a headache at 5:30am. So we cancelled that plan because I didn't want Chris to get a migraine. We had far too much driving planned that day for that to happen. So, everyone went back to bed. We all met up in downtown Portland at the Saturday Market (it was Sunday). We glanced at the Voodoo donut line and decided hell no. Donuts are good but not THAT good. We have Psycho Donuts back in San Jose (they're just as good). We found coffee and then headed to our market. Anna really wanted to go and had heard ... read more

We woke up to the ceiling of our tent covered in condensation. At first I thought our tent leaked and then Chris explained basic science to me. Oh yeah. I guess we ARE in a lush meadow instead of on a dry peak. We tried to maneuver around the tent without making it rain on our heads. I didn't actually leave the tent til I was sure Billy and Joy were awake. None of us wanted to deal with the mosquitoes any longer than we had to. Flying bastards. At least the ones where we camped weren't as aggressive as the ones in Long Meadow. Those bastards will die trying to bite through seven layers of clothing. Once I was sure we were all wake, we all agreed to just pack up camp, eat some energy ... read more

The unfortunate circumstance of camping on a mountaintop is the lack of water sources. So, when I rolled out of bed at 5:50am for a beautiful sunrise (not nearly as awesome as sunset the night before, tho), I had a choice- drink the last of my water... or make coffee. Ofcourse I chose coffee. C'mon, like that's a choice! I enjoyed my delicious cup of coffee, cold, because we didn't feel like dealing with the jetboil for just my coffee- also it wasn't very cold outside. As soon as the sun rose, it warmed up fast. We ate our cold lunches instead of cooking because of our shortness of water. Then we packed up camp and headed down the mountain to find some water. We headed for what I hoped would be "the saddle" on the ... read more

Today was my favorite day. When I was washing the breakfast dishes at the communal spigot yesterday morning, another mom was telling me about a hike they did to the Chaos Crags. My sister had also mentioned this particular hike earlier this month when she camped here. I remembered her saying it was steep at parts but the mom made it seem totally doable with kids. Both really enjoyed it, and it apparently ends at a lake you can swim in. With nothing better to do today (besides canoeing later- Arya's been asking about going on a boat every day), that became our plan. We started out at 1045am, strolling up at toddler speed, which means lots of sitting on logs, picking up sticks, collecting rocks and even her first squat in the woods. The trail ... read more