Where oh where has the summer fun gone?!

Good Grief! My last entry was the beginning of June and now it is the 1st of September!! As you have probably noticed (or maybe not!) there has been a lack of activity on my blog lately! Not because there hasn't been much going on - are you kidding?! We just haven't been home! That's par for the course during summer in the Crawford house!

So, where do I start! In addition to all the trips we took, we enjoyed partaking in our new obsession, uh, I mean, our new hobby, and did quite a bit of geocaching this summer.

We started off our summer with our annual Oregon coast trip with my folks. This year we decided to rent a beach house in Oceanside near Tillamook instead of camping at Beverly Beach. It was great fun! Introduced my folks to geocaching and of course had to visit the Tillamook Cheese Factory!

We ended June with Alyssa's dance recital. She participated in Tap this year. Their perfomance was a karate-themed piece to of all things - Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song"! Way Cool!

Before we knew it, it was July, and Shawn and I traveled to Lake Tahoe for a weekend getaway to celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary. We decided to relive our adolescence just a bit and got tickets to see Cheap Trick, Heart, and Journey in concert. It was fantabulous! I was a little nervous about hearing Journey, one of my most favorite groups, without the vocal stylings of ol' Steve Perry, but I have to say their new guy, Arnel Pineda, does a stupendous job!

Shawn and I decided to try a little geocaching on our own as well. If you're ever in the Lake Tahoe area, we recommend "The Full Monty" geocache! The view is quite...hmmm...remarkable!

So, let's see, after that we traveled to La Grande with Shawn's folks to visit with the Erickson clan for our annual summer get-together. Decided to try a little mountain biking this year! Boy, do I feel old and out of shape! This wasn't just a little casual trail riding, oh, no - the Erickson's don't mess around - this was the real deal! We first shuttled the bikes by truck up the ridge near Mt. Emily. I'm thinking okay, this is pretty easy - then came the part where we actually got on the bikes! We then rode the bikes uphill a little more before making our way back downhill to the house! Let's just say, I walked kinda funny for a couple days afterwards and I don't think my hands have forgiven me yet for gripping the brakes during the entire downhill trek! But don't get me wrong - we had a blast and the scenery was gorgeous!

Oh, and yes, we did some geocaching too!

After La Grande, we headed home for a few days of laundry and then were off again to the coast to visit Shawn's grandma in Coquille and his aunt, who came out for her summer visit from Nebraska. And you guessed it....more geocaching!!

Then back home again for a few more days of laundry before we headed south to San Diego for our last trip of the summer. Enjoyed the sunset at Mission Beach and then took the girls to Seaworld and the USS Midway aircraft carrier the following day. Didn't think the girls and I would enjoy the Midway as much as we did. We ended up staying for most of the day - it was pretty darn cool! Then we were off that evening to see Shamu and the other sights at Seaworld.

Then we were off for a drive north on Hwy 1/101 to enjoy the California coast on our way back to Oregon. We stopped for a couple of hours at Huntington Beach so the girls could swim in the ocean, where you can actually swim without first numbing your body to the water temperature or have to resort to wearing a wetsuit (for those of you who are not sturdy Oregon coast natives!)

One of our other sights along the way was the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Had heard about it many times, but had never visited before.

Then it was off to San Francisco! We had plans to visit Alcatraz, but soon discovered, as we found was the main theme of our trip, that you just can't travel spontaneously anymore! At least not to popular areas! Unfortunately, we mistakenly thought we could just drive as long as we wanted and would be able to find a place to stay for the night without making reservations ahead of time - boy were we wrong! After trying this for a couple of nights, we had to resort to finding a wireless hotspot and making hotel reservations online. Which brings me back to Alcatraz...found all the information about the ferry trip online and saw that you could buy tickets ahead of time, but we thought, what the heck - we don't mind standing in line to buy tickets - we're on vacation, man! We're not in a big hurry! There's lots of departure times on the ferry! So, we got there in the morning, parked the car, walked to the ferry dock, got in line, and.....they were SOLD OUT! Not just for that day, but for five days out! You've got to be kidding - I wish I were! So, dejected, we got back in the car and crossed the Golden Gate in the fog! It fit our mood! Oh, well, we decided that we would just make a special trip back in October! And we learned our lesson - so much for spontaneity! But that suits my Shawn boy just fine anyway! He's the planner - I'm just the navigator! And speaking of navigators - our GPS "Lori" was a wonderful addition to our trip - she told us where to go all the time - we didn't always agree, but it was good to have her along!

So, after getting on track with reservations, we headed north through the Redwoods. Breathtaking as always! Even found the "drive-through" tree! Amazing that it is still a living tree! Oh and yeah did I mention we did some geocaching?!

Ended our trip with a visit to the Oregon Caves before heading back to Central Oregon. It was the girls' first visit. Shawn and I hadn't been in about 20+ years. It was a scorching hot day, so it felt good to wander around in the caves. And the trip wouldn't be complete without some more geocaching!

So, that's about it! Tomorrow is the first day of school (and work, for me!) Can't believe it has gone so fast! Oh, well, it will be Christmas break before we know it!