Camping at Sand Creek...

We packed up the motorhome (and the motorcycles, and a 4-wheeler, and the bikes in the trailer) last Thursday and headed up Chinook Pass to Sand Creek. This is where Rick and his mom go elk hunting every year. It is a dry camp and not a 'camp ground'. It was so pretty though. I have only been up there once but Kathie takes Kaity up every summer to camp. Kathie followed us up with her trailer also.

It was a slow go getting out of town. The top-notch 1989 John Deer Motorhome did not want to start up when Rick turned it off to get propane. Once he got it started I made him go to Napa and get a starter from his brother... the heck if I was going to get stranded up there on Sunday! So we finally rolled out of town at 12:45 on Thursday. When we got up to Sand Creek we were greeted with the crisp cold air of the mountains. It was late afternoon and there was a little rain, which was good because it knocked all the dust down, but it was cold. The bummer was that we weren't allowed to have camp fires. So we set up camp and got dinner cooking and spent the rest of the evening visiting and playing games in the motorhome. Friday morning we got up and guess what... it was still cold! No rain though and no wind. We made breakfast and headed out for a hike. Trace was not at all interested in maybe seeing a bear. He was flat freaked out at the thought. But we enjoyed a nice hike and got back to camp and unloaded the motorcycles and 4-wheeler. Trace's motorcycle had to have the training wheels taken off to get in the trailer so we decided to see how he did without them. He had no problem riding it but the boy does not pay attention to where he is going. He would look to the side and drive right into the trees. Probably not a good idea to learn how to ride sans-training wheels in the mountains. Rick put them back on and the kids took off around camp for an hour or so. Rick then took them up on the trails.

Saturday was another good hike with the kids and a great ride up to a clearing where we could see a beautiful MT. Rainer. I took a bunch of pics and the kids ran around and took a break after their long ride up. It was so warm up there and the sunshine was out, clear blue skies...just perfect! We rode back to camp and the kids quickly put on shorts and ran down the creek. It was all of about 10 minutes before Trace was down to his underwear and in the water. They played for hours soaking wet in the mud. We all sat down there watching and laughing at them.

Sunday morning we decided to take one more nice ride before picking up camp. Trace decided to ride with us on the 4-wheeler since his bike and trainingwheels wasn't the easiest thing to get around on. Kaitlyn had been doing so good with the trails. I could watch her without having a heart attack (which is not even close to being the case with T-man!). Well we came up on a huge mud puddle that took up the entire trail. We went through it and then Kaitlyn got in it but didn't realize that she was in 2nd gear, not 1st and killed it right in the middle. She was soaked, and crying. Rick told her she had to get off and push it out. She sat debating with him that it was in neutral and stuck. He in return debated with her it was in 1st gear and not stuck. This went on for a few minutes until he finally got off the 4-wheeler and went down and and told her (very calmly of course) to put the bike in neutral, get off of it and push it out. Low-and-behold she did the first 2 things (shifted, got off) and guess what...it pushed right out! She was not happy with her wet shoes and wet jeans. I told her she now had more power to ask for riding pants and boots.

We got back to camp and got everything loaded up. Just when we were about to shut the trailer door guess who pulled into camp... the Sheriff! He got off his bike and came over to chat. He asked Rick if he was familiar with the riding rules up there. Rick said this was his first time there to ride so he didn't know them all. Well apparently the 1st big no-no was 4-wheelers. WHOOPS!!! He really cool though and just said that if he would have caught us we would have had something to chat about but we needed to know for next time. He also wasn't real impressed that the kids bikes weren't licensed. Another big WHOOPS. The 4-wheeler was though!! He probably would have been REALLY ticked if he would have noticed Kathie's trailer wasn't either. But he just told us to enjoy our day and he took off riding. I'm going to go with that fact that he has about the coolest job ever, most guys dream job, and took pity on our not so smart move of not having a trail map with us. That and the John Deer, I'm telling ya, I'm sure he thought that this was just about as much fun as we could have :-) Before we left, the kids set off bottle rockets. They thought that was so fun...

We got home late afternoon on Sunday and get everything unpacked and started the laundry. I still am not done! We had such a great weekend, the perfect way to spend the last weekend before school starting!