The High Desert

I just spent an hour doing this post, only to have blogger make the whole thing disappear. I've already been aggravated with blogger and its darn annoying photo loading "quirks" but now I've had it, at least for tonight. I'm doing the post again, so that it is done (check "family vacation blog post" off the to do list) but I just don't feel like really re-doing it. So this is the short version.

In mid-August we went down to Sunriver, Oregon for a week's vacation.
Family photo outside the lava tube. These rocks were not that comfortable for sitting on, thus the awkward body positions.

We were lucky to have friends vacationing in Sunriver at the same time. We all hiked the lava tube together, and this is the "after" shot, with one of the dads behind the camera.

J taking a break from pulling both kids in the bike trailer. Two kids + trailer = about 100 lbs. It was a good workout.

The spider web at the kids play area at the High Desert Museum. It was an awesome museum. It met all the requirements of good tourist sites for my family growing up - good exhibits, good food, good gift shop, clean bathrooms. No, but seriously, this museum is part natural history museum (think native animals and animal presentations and geography/geology exhibits,) part living history museum (sawmill shown below is operational on weekends, plus farm animals, re-enactors, and things for kids to try,) and part local history museum (but fun for kids, with craft projects, and interesting display rooms to explore.)

G and S learned about wildfires as part of the natural forest cycle, 19th century laundry techniques, how porcupines climb down trees, and how to go snake hunting. They also got to see more chipmunks than we could count, make worry dolls and bat pictures, and get new books at the gift shop.

We visited Crater Lake one day, and this is the best family photo we got there. It was too hot to do much hiking, and the kids were tired after a short visit, but we did enjoy the "How Crater Lake Was Formed" movie. G watched it at least 3 times, entranced by the animation of a volcano forming and then exploding.

S generally enjoyed being silly, and avoiding the camera, but here he's even smiling! If it hadn't been so hot, I think we might have done the wildflower walk. Well and if G wasn't so worried about the "wild" flowers. She insisted that she does not like wild flowers, just regular flowers.

This is the cool merry-go-round at the Sunriver playground. J got his upper body workout pushing this around with 10-12 kids on it.

G loved the Columbia River Gorge windmills. There were hundreds, and they looked huge (and according to my google searches are somewhere between 250 and 400 feet tall.) All in all, a good family vacation.