Montana

On the way home from Washington we went to visit Rebecca's brother's house in Montana. Originally it was supposed to be a Little family reunion, but it ended up just being our family, Ryan's family, and Rebecca's parents. Although we missed Trenton's family and Tyler's family, we still had a fun time.

Ryan and Monica recently finished building their house in Whitefish, a smaller city just outside Glacier National Park. They built their house in a really pretty neighborhood with lots of trees on all of the lots.

One of the highlights of that trip for me was the Highline Trail hike that Rebecca, Ryan, Monica, and I did on my birthday.  It was about 17 miles long (8.5 each way). Parts of the trail were right along a cliff's edge, but other parts went up to peaks, and mountain lakes and valleys. The views were breathtaking - one of the best hikes for views that I can remember. It was difficult, but well worth it. I would say it makes it in my top 3 hikes of all time. And being able to do something so strenuous helped me feel not so old on my 40th birthday.

On another day we all went back as a group to Glacier National Park. On that trip we saw a bear, ram, and moose. We also did a hike to a few waterfalls and enjoyed the fresh mountain air.

I thought I took a few more pictures while we were there, but I guess not. We also went to a couple different lakes and swam and played around in kayaks, went to a park, and played around in Ryan and Monica's hot tub. Ryan also took me on a bike trail and showed me how out of shape I really was and the kids loved playing with their cousins. Monica was also kind enough to take the family picture that we now have as the title picture for our blog. 

This trip was a nice way to end our summer.

Summer Washington Visit

Since we couldn't do our Europe trip as planned, we wanted to pack in as many fun things as we could think of into the summer. This included spending most of the month of July in Washington with Grandma and Grandpa Swift and Grandma and Grandpa Little.

We started off at Grandma and Grandpa Swift's house and got their right before Independence Day. On one afternoon, Talitha taught Julia and Rebecca how to do frosted sugar cookies.

Isaac and Kim's family was there too. They had just finished up school in Minnesota and were spending the summer there before moving to Hong Kong. It was a lot of fun getting to spend time with them before they moved so far away.

Here we are lighting off fireworks.

While there we made a trip to Mount Rainer. There was still a lot of snow up at the main visitor center. We did a couple of hikes as a group. Then some went home while some of us stayed in tents up there for the night. It was definitely a lot colder than the camping we just did in southern Colorado and southern Utah.

It was kind of cloudy, but we did get some peaks at the top of the mountain.

It was fun exploring around all of the fallen trees by our campground. It brought back a lot of memories of when I would do this with my siblings when we would go camping here when we were young.

On another day we did a cool hike by Puget Sound. I think it was a three mile trail around a golf course and down by the sound. The incline was challenging at one part, but it was nice that it was all paved.

Some of the other things we did with Grandma and Grandpa Swift were going to parks, going on walks around the neighborhood, playing pickleball, visiting with Talitha's and Malachi's families, and playing games.

Then, right before Rebecca's birthday, we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Little's house. It is nice that they live so close and we can visit both of them whenever we go to Washington.

One of the highlights that we did with them was a trail through the woods in Maple Valley that was covered with gnomes. There had to well over a thousand gnomes that people had set up along the trail. It was also cool that the trail was really cool that the trail winded around a lot and it was easy to get lost. It felt a little more like a trail from one of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tails.

On the way home we stopped by a park to play a bit.

While visiting Grandma and Grandpa Little we also made a trip down to the Oregon coast. Rebecca has fond memories of doing this when she was growing up, so we were all really excited to get this in.

On the way down, we stopped by a curiosity shop in southern Washington.

A two headed cow.

I don't know what these things were, maybe a goat with one eye and another with three horns.

The biggest feature of the store was Jake the Alligator Man. Some of the kids had actually read about him earlier in the summer, before we knew that we were going to go to the store.

World's largest frying pan.

World's largest chopsticks.

At the beach. It was a little chilly the whole time we were there, but that didn't stop the children from playing in the waves all day long.

Our Airbnb was pretty close to this tree, which was maybe the largest in Oregon or something like that.

Some of the other things that we did with Grandma and Grandpa Little were going to parks, picking blackberries and making treats with them, playing games, talking to Alexa (and the boys listening to music from Alexa while playing with magic cards), some walks around their neighborhood and Green River College, visiting with Rebecca's Aunt/Uncle/cousins, shopping, pickleball, and making COVID-19 masks.

Right before we left Washington for an early birthday present, Ethan, Christian, and Elliott agreed to do a hike up Mount Si. It was a steep hike, but a really fun way to spend the day. My Dad and brother were able to come along with us.

Overall, it was a fun summer trip. It had been a long time since we had visited Washington and it was great to be able to spend so much time with our family there.