After last nights nightmare drive, I was so excited to wake up to a peaceful sunrise. The kids were still sleeping, so I quietly drove down the hill to get to Boise. When I got there, I ran into a Whole Foods for blueberry muffins and some shampoo and conditioner. This whole sleeping in the car thing has its advantages…AND DISADVANTAGES! Like getting properly clean being high on that list!
Look at the kids making due when the sun starts waking them up!
I know the kids get to choose these adventures, but I started driving to Vale, Oregon because I knew they would love to have Vale on their adventure.
Why???
Because it is on the Oregon Trail?
Nope.
Because Lexi is serving her mission in Vale!
It was perfect, because Lexi was going to take one of my coats that was at Tristen’s house, but she never got it. So with the coat in hand…we sought out to get it to her.
We got Lexi’s mailing address from Angi, and headed over. We found the apartment, and knocked.
No answer.
I then said…”Okay guys…we need to be sleuths. Where would a sister missionary go on a Monday morning?”
They thought and thought. The first suggestion was to drive the streets to see if we could find two girls on bikes. Then someone said, “Let’s go to the church.”
We agreed that someone there might have the missionaries phone number.
We drove on to the church, and walked around to see if any of the doors happened to be open. The kids went one way, I went the other. All of a sudden, I heard “Mom..Mom!!!” I looked over, and there was Lexi!!!
My kids had caught her on her P Day at the church.
They were all so excited to see her, and so happy we found her!
It was such a fun morning. We chatted with her for about 20 minutes, and hugged her goodbye.
AS we drove off, I announced to the kids that we were all filthy, and we needed to find a way to get clean! We looked up a local reservoir , and drove 10 minutes to it.
Navy said Bully Creek Reservoir was named after Scout!
We all jumped in, lathered up, and got ourselves back to some sort of clean.
I think we would have stayed for hours, but there were prickly bushes we had to avoid, so we only spent an hour at Scout…I mean Bully Creek.
I stopped at a bank on our way out, and the kids created a storage unit for our car. I was so impressed with their ingenuity. I loved it, but couldn’t see out the back– so I ended up vetoing it.
Our drive was fun today. We stopped at random towns with parks and rivers. When Dash (or anyone else) was naughty in the car, I made the offender run. Dash got a hill run for extra naughtiness.
Our favorite town stop was Baker City, Oregon. There were fruit trees everywhere, darling parks, a perfect river through town, and an incredibly delicious homemade sandwich and ice cream shop. As we drove by any fruit trees, the kids always wanted to pick a snack. This apple tree was incredible. At first I told them no because it was in front of someone’s house. But there was so much ripe fruit, and plenty that had fallen to the ground, that when they begged, I told them to go ask. There was nobody home, so my kids took the liberty of grabbing just one apple that was way too high to reach. They jumped and jumped, to no avail. Then they used teamwork. Navy created a bench with her body, and Scout jumped off of it. Apple picked!
Just as they were coming to the car, a lady (the neighbor) came towards us with a rake. I was humiliated. But she said, “The only things that eat those apples are the deer! Please pick as many as you’d like.” She then proceeded to help them get a ton down with the rake.
One thing we have all noticed on this CYOA trip, is how kind everyone is. Literally everyone thinks our trip is awesome, and is helpful and nice. We keep talking about it in the car, and repeatedly decide that we want to be that same way.
We drove north again. They wanted to head into Washington. Their ultimate goal is to get to the coast, and drive south along the Pacific Ocean. So Washington…here we come.
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