7.09.2012

Sun Lakes and a dam

This past weekend was spent together as a family camping in the heat and sunshine of Eastern Washington.  It is pretty mandatory that if you want to go camping in the summer and have a specific state park you would like to stay at, reservations must be made a few months in advance.  Unfortunately, I wasn't on the ball like I should have been, so by the time I got to getting online to reserve a spot, most of the state parks we like to visit were booked.

Bummer.

But (silver lining here) I did find a pretty decent campsite at Sun Lakes State Park where the temperatures can reach triple digits in the summer due to the desert like topography.  I didn't take too many pictures since it's kinda hard to be out in the sand, dirt, water with a nice DSLR since my point and shoot is still in need of repair.  We had no cell service and certainly no 3G service so our little family was unplugged for the weekend. 


After setting up our tent and giving the boys boundaries of where they could play, we spent some time hanging out as a family.  Luckily, there was a rather large section of grass behind our site that backed up to the golf course, so we let the dog off his lead and tossed the ball around to him so he could get some exercise.  Dinner was hot dogs and s'mores over the fire since my chicken hadn't thawed yet.  I also learned how many items I had forgotten, but how you can improvise with what was in the camping box.

Saturday was spent having a yummy breakfast, a walk around the park with the dog and then Mike took the older two boys plus the dog to the water to play.  I stayed back to try to get the little man to take a nap.  Futile effort, but I did get to read some of my book.  After the boys returned from the water, we had lunch, naps and then went back out to the water all together.

That evening was a chicken salad and more s'mores over the camp fire.  Camping and sleep is always such an anomaly and my boys were no different the first night than the second, but we survived and had a fun time together as a family.


After packing up our site and hitting the road, Mike and I took a little road trip to see the Grand Coulee Dam.  It is quite the sight.  There are three sections of the dam that generate power and the amount of concrete that was needed to build the dam was phenomenal, 12 million cubic yards.  Crazy, huge!  We did drive up to the visitors center and would have liked to have taken the tour, but the temperature was over 90 degrees and there was no where for Oreo to hang out, so we just turned around and headed for home.

We took a detour into Wentachee for Sonic Drive-Thru and honestly, the only thing going for them is their drinks.  Lunch was heh, but we ate it, and drove on to home.  Road trips are always an adventure and we saw a truck pulling a travel trailer on the side of the road on fire.  Luckily it wasn't engulfed in flames, but I felt so bad for those people who owned the truck.  Due to the location of the truck, it was 20 minutes down the highway before we saw a fire truck and on the other side of Stevens Pass.  I did send up a few prayers for that family.  What a way to end your weekend.  We got about 20 miles from our turn off on Highway 2 and traffic was dead stopped.  Apparently, we managed to come across at just the right time to get stuck in lovely 2 lane traffic. It took an hour to go 8 miles and there are no alternative roads until you get a few more miles down the road.  Yay for google maps on the ipad, because that was my saving grace.  I was driving and Mike was looking for alternative roads and we discovered on in the next town over that would take us directly to highway 203 and onto home.

It was a fun, crazy, hot weekend.  No one got sunburned, PRAISE THE LORD!  And we all still love each other :)

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