September travels.

We did some traveling in September...thought I'd share a bit of the sights! 

Early in the month Mike & I headed up to Seattle with a truckload of Allison & Stephen's stuff!  They were settling into their new digs near the UW campus, getting started with school and work, and we were able to spend a few days hanging out with them; seeing the campus, biking, paddle boarding (for the first time!) and getting to know their new neighborhood!

Then, we headed across the waters and over to the Olympic National Park.  I've never been, but Mike had gone years ago with a photography class, so he was eager to show me around.  We stayed in Forks, WA...and if you are a Twilight fan you will know that it is where some of the film(s) were shot.  I have not read any of the books or seen any of the movies, so the tourist attractions in the little town were lost on me!  We did, however, wander a beach path after dark and it was plenty creepy...sure felt like a vampire was lurking...!

Spent our days driving here and there, did a little hiking, found an amazing spot to paddle board (Lake Crescent...amazing emerald water that was unbelievably clear, surrounded by hills covered in beautiful trees) and we sampled some local fare.  Our evenings, we headed to the beaches for sunsets!

After a few days of exploring, we headed South to Pacific City, Oregon.  Home away from home.  We hiked out the beautifully forested, muddy trail to Cape Lookout on one afternoon...spent a couple of days just hanging out watching the dories come and go...paddle boarded a nice lake in Lincoln City...and explored Cape Kiwanda a little more (oh, and if I am offering full disclosure, I might also mention that we ended up in the ER late one night, Mike passing a kidney stone!).  We made an unexpected trip to Hermiston to honor Mike's Uncle, Dave Landon, who passed away after a long illness.  Dave was one of the first "Ryan" family members I met as he and his wife, Carolyn, lived in Hermiston when Mike and I first met there...and Dave always made me feel like part of his family; a daughter.  He was the first voice I recall hearing when I woke up in the hospital having just had Ashley...he told me "she is beautiful".  I will miss his laugh. 

Mike headed back after a week, leaving me to set my own pace for the rest of the time...I did a lot of beach walking, took a paddle board yoga class on the Nestucca River (and never fell off!), enjoyed time to read and write and daydream...and took a glass blowing lesson one afternoon (made a cool paperweight)!  "I come to the sea to breathe" is one of my favorite quotes...and I sure do love it...something about the unceasing movement of the sea that calms me.

I made it home safely and spent a day re-grouping at home before I packed up Ashley & Harper for a road trip to Island Park to visit some friends!  It was a fun visit and great to spend a day with Ashley & Harper, too, after having been away for 3 weeks!  Harper is growing so fast now...busy learning new things every day (stay tuned for the next post for a Harper update!)!  That next weekend, we met those friends in the Grand Teton Park and spent a beautiful Fall day doing a little kayaking down the Snake River...and then we camped out at a spot where we could watch the full moon go down as the sun rose up right over the Teton Range. 

September was spent mostly on the road, for me...and Fall always feels like a good time to settle back in at home for a bit...so this month I did some portrait work with some sweet clients, did mountains of laundry and plenty of housework and dreaded paperwork, caught up with some old friends in Boise and took Mike's parents to a BSU football game.  And then, I traveled once again, to Seattle to visit Allison...this time with Ashley & Harper!  We did kind of a girl's weekend (we let Stephen stay...and baby Uriah!), with shopping and sight-seeing and ice cream and cookies and plenty of sitting around watching Harper!  I managed to do a couple of photo shoots too...stay tuned for that! 



On a ferry, leaving Seattle for the Olympic National Park.

The Seattle skyline.

Lake Crescent...incredible waters!

Hurricane Ridge, Olympic Park

Second Beach

Second Beach

I can't resist making towers on rocky shores!

Rialto Beach

Rialto Beach

Pacific City, Oregon...home away from home.

Moonset and sunrise, over the Teton Range.

I confess, I am not really a morning person....

...particularly when they are absent the smell of freshly brewed coffee...  But this particular cold April morning...well, this beautiful, golden sunrise was worth the cup of instant java I was sipping on by the banks of Oxbow Bend...



Summer.

I wish the Winter months would fly by like Summer months always do!  My last blog posting was in June and I was at the Oregon Coast...and here it is August already?!  And, while I am really looking forward to more beach time this Fall (including a trip up to Seattle and into the Olympic National Park and then more Oregon time!)...the Summer has mostly been spent closer to home. 
We left the beach and made a detour to Washougal, WA, to watch Mike and his brother, Shawn, along with thousands of other crazy people, compete in a Spartan Race!  If you've participated in one of these races before, good for you!  If you've thought about it, watched the videos, studied the courses and decided against it, even better for you!!!  It was crazy and intense, and I was just a spectator!
Shawn is an amazing competitor, kind of a BEAST, and he killed the course in under an hour!  I am pretty sure he's hooked now...I hear he's going to do another run this fall!  And Mike did great!  I will be honest, I kept an eye on the ambulances that were standing by, a little bit worried...but he did really well ("for an old guy" he would say)!  He got hung up in a pack for awhile on one obstacle, which the participants aptly nicknamed "Cheese Grater Hill" (imagine crawling uphill for about a hundred yards on a thin layer of mud over a cheese grater [a rocky hillside]...ouch...oh, did I mention you'd be crawling under barbed wire?!).  But, he finished it with a smile on his face...I think that was a smile, it might have been mud...?!  Mike says he is really glad he did it, but don't be looking for him on another course any time soon!

The brothers; before and after...still smiling!



The weekend after we got home we packed up again and headed south to Mack, Colorado for "Country Jam", a weekend outdoor music festival which takes place in a giant dust bowl in the middle of nowhere!  Luke Bryan (who was an amazing performer!), Jo Dee Messina, Trace Adkins and, my favorite, the Zac Brown Band, were among the long list of performers over the weekend.  We did a lot of people watchin' in and around the concert grounds (plenty of crazies!), wandered into the cute little town of Fruita, and spent one morning exploring the Colorado National Monument, trying to stay out of the heat wave!  We got to have a fun, unexpected breakfast with my Aunt Sally and her husband Mike, who were passing through...and then saw them again a few days later when they came up through Wyoming to Pocatello. 

The Colorado National Monument...if it looks really hot and really dry, well, it was!

We spent a pretty quiet 4th of July, watching the local fireworks show from our deck, headed to the mountains for some kayaking, and then spent a couple of weekends in Boise helping Mike's parents move into their new digs. 

In between our travels we, of course, got in lots of Harper-time! She is growing so fast and has the cutest little personality developing!

I could do this all day...!

Tummy time!

Momma at work!

Seriously, how cute is this face?!

So sweet!

Reading stories!

5 months young!

They make cute babies!

And then, finally, Allison & Stephen arrived!  Oh, I sure do miss her when she is away...and she has been away for awhile!  They've been having adventures of their own, in Alaska, California, Alabama and Florida!  We headed to Jackson for some great kayaking (minus the crazy storm that literally chased us off of String Lake!), have had a few dinner/bbqs with both our girls and their hubbies, missed out on our camping/hiking trip because a stomach bug infected our house : ( ...but have enjoyed spending a quiet week just kind of hanging out.

Harper time with Aunt Allison!

Floating the Snake River, near Oxbow Bend.

Leisurely float down the Snake River.

See those thunder clouds coming over the Grand...

...yep, chased off the water by rain...and thunder...and LIGHTNING!

Triangle Rock!  String Lake.

Clouds cleared away...beautiful day on the lake!

Considering...

Making the leap!

Mid-air!

Splash!

They like each other a lot.  :)

Up next, well, Allison is packing up the rest of her things (we've had fun going through all of her childhood stuff...I didn't know I had that many stuffed animals in my house!) for their move up to Seattle!  Stephen starts school again next month and Allison will be settling in, making a new home and looking for work...and we'll get to see them soon with a truckload of their household stuff!

We're all headed to Boise for a Hawks baseball game and a birthday celebration (Happy Birthday to Venita, my sweet mom-in-law, who will turn 74 on Sunday!).  And then, a kayaking trip in the works, a trip to Boise to do some senior pictures with my beautiful niece, and then...finish out the summer with a trip to Washington and then Oregon!  The beach is calling!

Spring in the Tetons?!

The interior roads opened up in the Tetons a couple of weekends ago so we thought we'd take full advantage and spend a couple of nights in our mobile "Yurt."  Ya know, Springtime...  We had visions of baby animals out in abundance, Spring flowers in bloom, warm days and cool nights...  Well, we might have been just a few weekends early, as it snowed.  Not only did it snow, but there was a lot of snow, particularly in the North end of the park.
We did catch sight of some of the park's notorious creatures; bison, elk, coyotes, moose...and lots of birds, like these, trying to shake off winter!
Looking forward to our next trip up to the Tetons...surely the flowers will be blooming...?!

Idaho's State bird...the Mountain Bluebird, and...

...a Western Meadowlark.

Mother Nature.

It was so nice of Mother Nature to provide my favorite color in the sky on Mother's Day (kind of a purple-y haze)!  Okay, so I probably would've prefer it not to be in the form of a crazy, blowing snow storm, but hey...it was pretty cool nonetheless!  



The ability to fly...

It was kind of a birding weekend, last weekend.  We saw plenty of four-legged animals in the Tetons (everything but a bear!) and we saw lots of feathered creatures waiting out what is hopefully the last bits winter...  (It is snowing like crazy right now, so maybe the end of winter isn't quite in sight yet....?!)

Have you ever asked people, if they could "come back" as any animal, what animal would they be?  A lot of people say some kind of bird, right?  I am sure it is the idea of flight...what an amazing kind of freedom that must be...  My husband, for example, always answers that he would come back as an eagle...in the United States, of course, as eagles are a national symbol and therefore protected from human predators!  It doesn't hurt that eagles live in incredibly beautiful places, like the Grand Teton National Park, or Alaska...either of those places are where he would choose to live! 

In any case, thinking about eagles...makes me think about freedom...and makes me think, again, about the Karen people we met, the IDP's of Burma...many of whom have never known freedom...  Imagine that, never knowing freedom...in fact, knowing only a life of oppression, terrorism, fear...

Tomorrow I will write more about those amazing people...today I am appreciating my freedom!

I went to the mountains...to breathe...

I am a lucky woman with pretty fantastic opportunities…

One of those came this past weekend, the chance to head to the hills, or rather, to the mountains, the Grand Tetons to be specific, to hang out with some wildlife and nature, and a couple of wonderful guys (my husband and my nephew)! Another great opportunity came when my husband, who was driving, was turning the car around so that he could get a nice photo of this red-tailed hawk… Well, his camera (he has a really nice, long lens) was resting in my lap as he turned the car around, and the hawk was getting kind of jittery…so, I caught this as he flew away…

Serendipity! Thanks honey!

For Mike.

About every other day my husband asks, "did you post any pictures to your blog today?"  He seems so disappointed when I say "not today!"...so, today, this post is, mostly, for him!  Hi honey!

We have a lot of images on our computer…I mean, a lot…in the 10's of thousands, easily…  Sometimes when we get home from a weekend getaway we barely have the time or energy to unpack our dirty clothes, let alone to download our memory cards…so the images sit, in wait…and they wait and wait…  The good news is, when we finally make time to review our images, it's kind of like an opportunity to live the moment all over again.  It's that "oh, I forgot about these" moments that inspires you yet again!  (And, in truth, makes you want to pack up and go once more!)

Such is the case with these…I took these on a fun day trip with our niece and nephew up to the Grand Teton Park, earlier this winter.  We did our best to dial up every animal they could think of to see…from big horn sheep to bull moose, coyotes, eagles, mountain goats, deer and plenty of elk, on and off the refuge…all in one day…and, we even threw in lunch!  We do love our backyard playground…and we love to share it with our friends! So, if you are ever in the mood for a wildlife adventure, give us a call…have empty memory cards, will travel!