Long hike to Long Lake

One of the highlights from our trip out west was our 3 day/2 night backpacking trip up in the Wallowa mountains. We drove down to La Grande OR, spent a day with Caleb's family, and then got up bright and early to hit the trail. We went with CAleb's brother and sister-in-law, Titus and Elizabeth. Between the 4 of us, we left 3 kids under 3 with the grandparents. It was our first time leaving Hannah for so long, but you will be happy to know that we all survived (even Caleb's parents :-D). It was a 10.5 mile hike with ~3,000 foot climb. The scenery was beautiful, and we had plenty of water...the only down side was it took us 12 hours to hike in, and 8 hours to hike out. I think next time we will let someone besides Titus pick our destination. :-D Here are some pics (there are lots! feel free to skim):

Here we are at the beginning of the trail (enthusiastic and energetic)

We hiked along a river and had to cross it several times. I counted at least 5 times that required either taking off our shoes, or some amazing balancing & jumping skills

Here’s Els & I in the amazing valley that we hit right after lunch on our first day. It was so gorgeous!

Here are some action shots:

Here I am next to one of the many waterfalls we crossed

Several times our trail became the river or was just filled with water.

Here we are at the apex of our hike looking down on swamp lake. We would have stopped at this lake if the mosquitoes hadn’t been so bad.

There were several places where our trail was covered with snow. Here’s Els crossing one of them.

Here’s the one dangerous snow crossing we had. You don’t want to lose you footing here!

Here we are hiking down to Swamp Lake

Yay, we made it to swamp lake!

Although these pictures don’t show it very well, the first night we were there, the place was covered with mosquitoes! Caleb holds the record, killing 11 mosquitoes in one swat. Here’s Caleb’s back

Day 2 was our chill day. Caleb and Titus built a raft.

As you can see, it really is a one person raft.

Caleb also did some fishing.

And then we hiked to the end of the lake to see the waterfall (pictures of waterfalls are never as cool as they are in person...but that still doesn't stop me from taking pictures)

Here’s a picture of me with my super tasty smore (it has a layer of peanut butter on it!)

This is Long Lake in the morning. Beautiful, huh!

Here we are on the trail out.

Here we are at the top on our way out.

More of our hike out

We had amazing views the whole time!

Here’s a picture of Caleb on the donkey bridge. You’ll have to ask him about the time he went up to long lake with horses and donkeys. We heard several stories and were thankful that none of us are as stubborn as a donkey. :-D

All in all, it was a great trip. We had tons of fun with Titus and Els, and even though we missed Hannah, we were glad the kiddos weren’t around. It is also nice to know that we can still handle a couple day backpacking trip and come out still moving and not too sore.

5 years

Saturday August 16 was our big 5 year anniversary. Can you believe it's been that long? Time flies!!

To celebrate such a monstrous occasion, we decided to lay low (since we just had 2 weeks of action packed fun on the West Coast...more to come soon!). The big event of the day was our tasty dinner. We made these supper yummy crepes (inspired by our Bon Appetit magazine). Our first filling for the crepes was shrimp in a yummy sauce. The sauce included bourbon, which we got to burn off. That was pretty cool. We also had sausage and several kinds of cheese. Then for dessert we had several different kinds of berries and chocolate sauce. All in all, it was dang good...and not as difficult as I thought it would be.

Anyhow, every once and a while I get to thinking (where do I find the time to do that?). Recently I"ve been thinking about how awesome marriage is. It's great to be with someone you know you can trust, and you know will be around forever. It just makes life so much more relaxing and fun. And it's awesome to think about how marriage gets better every year...like good wine. I know Caleb so much better than I did 5 years ago; I know when he's joking and when to take him seriously, I know tons of little things that will make his day, I know I can count on him all the time, and the list goes on. It's also great to think about how in 5 more years I will love him even more than I love him today. How awesome is that? Yeah, the challenges will be greater, but our little Hug family unit will be stronger too. I just praise God all the time for placing Caleb in my path, and for bringing us together. What a great God!

back from vacation

Greetings blog readers. Sorry for the lack of posts lately. We went on a family vacation to Seattle. And as there are several highlights, I will break our trip up into a couple of posts.

As always, we had a great time on the west coast. Some reoccuring highlights (highlights that we experience everytime we go) are:

Waterskiing:

Views of Mount Rainier (from my parent's deck):

blackberries:

And of course, hanging out with family

Acadia Me Day 2

We got up bright and early and went to the bass harbor light house. Here you can see the intense rocks on the southern most part of Mount Dessert Island.

Here are Hannah and Caleb in front of the light house.

Here's a pretty lake we saw while we were driving

After our own little self guided driving tour of the island, we went on a bike ride. Acadia has tons of carriage roads that they allow bike riders on. So Caleb and I picked an 8 mile loop that went by 2 ponds. Here we are in front of one of the lakes.

Here we are biking through the greenery

This is one of the really cool stone bridges that carriage roads use.

It was a pretty neat bike ride with several ups and downs. Caleb even stopped at one point to pick wild blueberries. It was a really pretty ride, but I was glad to get back to the car and sit down on something that wasn't a bike seat. Hannah had a OK time on the bike ride. Her favorite is to make loud noises to warn people we are going to pass. She like it so much that she even made noise when no one was around. However if someone waved to her, she would all of a sudden stop making noise, smile, and wave back. What a people person.

Here we are at the top of Cadillac mountain. This is the tallest mountain on the eastern coast line. It's a whoppen 1500ft tall, and you can drive your car to the top!

Here's Hannah enjoying chillin on a rock that is just the right size.

This is a view from the top

This is where we stopped to get lunch on the way home. We found it using the iPhone. Our food was really good...and it also happens to be where Laura Bush ate, so I thought it was worth a picture. :-D

Here's Hannah snoozing on the way back. We definitely wore her out.

All in all, I would rate this vacation a 5 out of 5

Acadia Me Day 1

So the other weekend Caleb, Hannah and I went up to Acadia National Park up in Maine. We had a really fun time! We stayed in a little cabin at a campground right near the bass harbor light house. Our cabin had one room with beds, and then a smaller room with a refrig and microwave. This worked out great because we put Hannah in the little kitchen and then we could stay up later. Here's a picture of our place:

When we first arrived Hannah had alot of fun carrying around the watering can from our place. She was really cute

The next day we decided to take the free shuttles to the main part of the island. We realized shortly into the ride that Hannah is not a huge fan of shuttles, where you are not buckled in, but you still can't move around as you please. Here we are trying to entertain her (and ourselves)

We got off the shuttles and did a beautiful 2 mile cliff walk along the ocean. Here are some highlights

Here's a self portrait:

Here's Hannah enjoying being off the shuttle...finally!

We ended at the beach and went swimming...or at least that was the intent. The water was pretty cold, but Hannah did get to try on her new swimsuit. This suit is really nice because it has good coverage and it has a zipper and thus fits over her head

That evening it dumped buckets of rain, so it was really nice that we had the little cabin!