Stoker Camping Extravaganza/WASHINGTON!

So, the sad truth of it is that our entire summer vacation summed up to two measly weeks. It's kind of our fault since Eric is going to school year round, but I'll blame BYU instead since that's the length of the break they give between summer and fall semesters. ;) We decided to try and make the most of it, so we planned a two week long expedition to Washington to visit my family, who we hadn't seen since Christmas. The drive there has never been described as short or scenic, and my love for Oregon took a blow because of their ridiculously low speed limits, but the company was good and we survived. It was so nice to finally be able to relax as I was done with my job back in Utah and Eric no longer had school or finals looming over him. My family was wonderful, and knowing how much we'd been wanting to go camping, they planned a three day trip to La Wis Wis campground in the Cascade Mountains. I was so excited for Eric to actually experience real camping in an old growth forest, where everything is green and beautiful. I joke with him that if Boise is the city of trees (and I love Boise), then he's never experienced real camping in Idaho. It was nice and cool there, and not real packed since it was the beginning of the week. We got there late Monday afternoon, set up camp, ate dinner and played some games.
Besides both our air mattress and my parent's mattress deflating, nothing too crazy happened. The next day we hiked around and rode bikes, and since it was slightly warm (at least for camping standards), we decided to go swimming and cliff jumping at Blue Hole.

Blue Hole is a portion of the river that gets wider and really deep, and is fed by glacier runoff, so it's ridiculously cold. It looked a bit different this year since heavy snow fall had caused flooding and deposited a lot of small rocks and silt, but luckily we found that the area for cliff jumping was still deep enough. So my family's been camping at this campground for about 12 or so years, and every year I've been, I've tried to talk myself into jumping off the cliff. I've done the lower one, which is maybe 10 feet to the water, but I've never got up the guts to try the higher one. In normal years, we've measured the drop to the water to be about 30 feet, but this year the water was a little lower so it was about 35 feet. I'd sworn to myself that I would actually jump the next time we came, but "unfortunately" I think that cliff jumping is frowned upon for pregnant women so I had to pass again. Eric on the other hand had no excuse, so the pressure was on and he performed marvelously. It took him a bit to talk himself into it, but he did and he was the first in my family to try. Crazy as he is, he actually jumped three times. He passed the pressure on to my 13 yr old brother Garrett, who took a lot more coaxing, but eventually took the plunge as well. I was super surprised when my mom decided that she would be the next to jump. While she screamed like a banshee on her way down, she did it. She's still recovering three weeks later from a bruised tail bone from landing wrong, but she did it. :) I was a pansy and just kind of waded around, but it was fun none the less. So cute story: while I just waded around, I spotted this pretty purple flower growing out of the base of the cliff on the far side of the bank, I jokingly told Eric that if he really loved me, he'd get me that flower. To "prove his love", he swam over, scrambled up the base of the cliff, pulled the flower out of some spiderwebs, and then realized that he didn't know how he'd get back across if he was holding the flower in one hand. Here's a video of him doggy paddling with one arm back across the water to bring me my flower. It was pretty hilarious to watch, but he sure showed me.




It's a good thing we went swimming that afternoon, because in true western Washington fashion, it started raining that night just before bed time and it just wouldn't let up. We actually had to pull the sleeping bags over our heads to stop the water that was dripping through the rain fly from landing on our faces all night. That was probably the second worst night camping I've ever experienced. Everything got wet. A pool actually started forming at the entry to our tent, so twice during the night I grabbed dirty clothes and tried to absorb most of it so it wouldn't reach the air mattress and the sleeping bags. We got so little sleep, and the next morning we found out that all three of the tents had flooded during the night. Everything and everyone was wet, and it was STILL raining, so we ate a quick breakfast and decided to pack everything up and head home a day early. Most of the rest of the break in Washington was nice and went well. We went swimming, helped can some peaches, played volleyball, hung out with extended family, attended court of honors, etc. The least enjoyable experience happened our last Sunday in Washington. My dad is the second counselor in the bishopric of my home ward, and last December when we visited, he and the rest of the bishopric thought it was pretty funny to call me up in the middle of sacrament meeting and ask me to bear my testimony. Everybody but me got their laughs in, and I told my dad if he did that again, we wouldn't come visit anymore (somewhat jokingly). Well, our last Sunday on this summer trip, my dad called me up completely out of the blue in the last 10 minutes or so of Sacrament meeting to make me bear my testimony again. I went from being completely calm and at ease to nervous beyond all reasoning in a matter of seconds. I was so shocked and nervous, I swear I gave the worst testimony EVER. I literally couldn't think at all. Afterwards numerous members of the ward came up and talked to me about it, each offering ways to punish my dad, mainly that I wouldn't ever let him see his grandchild. My favorite though came from an elderly gentleman who used to be my Sunday School teacher. Right after sacrament meeting was over he patted me on the back and then whispered that I had permission to go kick my dad in the shins. He's great. :) Anyway, my dad felt kind of bad afterwards because he thought I was REALLY mad at him (which I wasn't), but I convinced him to take us out to get some good Mexican food later that week as payment for my mental anguish. The rest of the break went well, and though it was really hard to say goodbye to my family, it was a little easier knowing we'll see them come Thanksgiving.