Road Trip

Remember that one day just last week when Mom decided we needed to get out of the house. We hit the road and a couple of days later we were in Tacoma, Washington. Grandpa Gooch even came with us. He drove the whole way and Mom took care of our every need.

Day one on the road was a trip down memory lane for Mom as we made our first pit stop in the small town of Bear River, Utah. We got to meet Grandpa's oldest sister, Mom's aunt Lurleen. She is one of two surviving sisters he has left. It brought back fond memories for my mom of playing with cousins at Aunt Lurleen's and Uncle Claire's house, rolling on the old barrel that is still sitting there in the front yard waiting for some other little kids to play on it.

Several potty breaks and many hours later, we finally arrived in LeGrande, Oregon where we got to make some of our own memories with 3 of our cousins that we don't get to see very often. Even better, Mom got to spend time with her sister and her husband that she doesn't get to see very often. We spent the night at Aunt Amberlee's. We had a ball sleeping on the living room floor with Kierstyn and Gabriel.
Day two of the trip we had all day to be somewhere so we got off the freeway and took the scenic route through Mt. Rainier National Park. We were tired of being in the car so much but the park was sure pretty.

Can you see Mt. Rainier in the background?

Mom says for Grandpa and her, it was worth the whole entire road trip. The only down side of it was not having our dad there to experience all that beauty with us. But, we would be seeing him shortly.

Dad got done with his field trip right about the time we pulled into town. We were all excited to see him and the end of the road for us. At least for a couple of days, that is. The motel pool was the perfect place for the us to play after wearing seatbelts for so long.

After spending three days of going to the beach,

trying to navigate our way through a crowded Pike's Market Place,

We found a Russian shop at Pike's Place that makes my mom and dad's favorite Parogee.

This is us sitting on a famous pig at Pike's Market Place

taking a ferry ride,

meeting up with mom's friends and family that live in the area,

This is my mom's cousin, LaRee. She fed us dinner and let us play with her dart guns.

This is Cindy and her family, a friend from my mom's teenage years.

(or at least somewhat in the area. Our old St. George friends and neighbors had to drive up from Eugene to meet us in Portland), And this is Nicole that used to live next door to us in St. George. She lives in Eugene now
Here we are at Multnoma Falls outside of Portland.

we made our way back home again. This was all Mom's idea of getting out of the house. She called it a spontaneous, fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants road trip. We had lots of fun with memories to last a lifetime.