Repat or Vacation or Retirement???

Here we are at Mount Saint Helens!

Well, we know that it's not repat! This retirement experience seems a lot like a nice, long vacation! And we're having a great time!
We just got home from a two week road trip. We started by heading north to Boise, just in time to celebrate the birthday of Andrea & Rycks twins. Andrea found this great
party place called "Monkey Business." Taytem and Rylee are now five years old. They had a lot of those inflatable toys that kids can climb on and slide down. But on top of that -- they had a fun climbing wall. It was fun to make it to the top. . . and now I can say that I have climbed a climbing wall! It was a fun day to share with the twins and Zoe! (as well as their twenty five little friends) We all enjoyed the fun day and then the ice cream and cake as well.

From Boise, we went over to Oregon, where we met up with Scott Eberle, one of Dave's golfing buddies who retired from Aramco about a month before Dave. It was great to see Scott and meet his new bride, Jeanie. We could kick ourselves for not taking out our cameras while we were there. We had a fun time with them. Jeanie is an excellent cook. The food was wonderful! She made this very tasty salmon with mango salsa, as well as barbequed chicken along with a terrific jicama salad. Berries were in season, and we were treated to the most delicious fresh blueberries, raspberries, strawberries along with sliced nectarines. Jeanie is one of those women who can work a full day at the office, and still come home and pull off an over-the-top meal for company and make it all look easy. I think I hate her.
We had fun playing speed scrabble and dominos with them. They took us on a little tour of the area around Redmond, where they live and we really enjoyed seeing Smith's rock -- a great hiking/climbing area. We also saw this fabulous bridge -- it was pretty scary looking down the hundreds of feet to the river below.

From Redmond, OR we headed north to see Julie and her family who live in Arlington, Washington, just north of Seattle. On our way there we drove by Mount Hood and came across a nice hike to Tamanawas Falls. It was a 2.5 mile hike with these spectacular falls as the reward at the end. We were even able to get behind the falls and get a little wet! We arrived at Julie and Jeff's to fine everyone well. We had a great time while we were there!
We visited ice caves in the mountains northeast of Seattle. They were spectacular. They are formed from melting of the large snow ave lances at the base of the mountain.
The caves are formed from the running water and water falls in the spring and summer.





















We enjoyed watching the kids play at this nice park that's on a little pond -- or was it part of the ocean? I think it was a pond.

After three days in Seattle, we meandered our way thorough some really beautiful scenery between Seattle and the northern border of Oregon to Seaside, Oregon, where we met Andrea and her family for three nights at the "Resort at Seaside". Traditionally, the Oregon coast is pretty chilly, but it just happened that the Northwestern corner of the country was experiencing a heat-wave at that time. Seattle got up to 96 degrees, and Portland was over 100. But Seaside stayed in the mid to upper 80's while we were there, and that was perfect for us!!!! We played on the beach and Ryck perfected his sandcastle making skills. We built a really nice bonfire one evening, and had a very nice time roasting hotdogs and marshmallows.