Epic camping trip 2009

A little late in putting these up. so many good pictures from the trip.

We are home now from our epic camping trip of 2009. We went back up to Lake of the Woods OR and camped out there for about a week with all of our friends. Some came up from San Diego with us, some from OR and some from WA drove down. We had an amazing time hanging out with friends and enjoying some great weather and beautiful scenery.

Here I am hanging out in a new hammock i bought. Carson and Madison were helping me test it out.

Wrestling in the hammock did some fun things with static electricity.
Beautiful sunset on the lake our first day there. We had great weather and no rain.
Scotty and Manessa looking out over the lake.
Joe and Sophie Helen by the lake
All the little kids caught frogs
Chara with Carson
Joe rented a pontoon boat and we toured around the lake
Chara and Riley looking so cute
everyone on the boat having fun
All the kids had a great time
Stacey had to do a bit of work so she had her phone out a lot.
the kids loving the water. Actually it wasn't horribly cold.
see! not too cold. we all went swimming
we even bathed in the lake as there were no showers, much to Charas shegrin and desparate attempts to find one.
Stacey jumping in.
Stacey and Madison
the gang looking good
and the whole swimming gang
Then came the pie eating contest. Staceys aunt Sherie brought us up some amazing food and a couple of pies
the kids dug right in
even Riley
Then it was the boys turn...
we showed the kids how to do it
yummmmm
Joe was to not be outdone
i think James won though...
Staceys mom attacked Stacey with a piece of pie
Chara was not happy about the bug situation. There were no mosquitos thank goodness, but the gnats were not pleasant around dinner time. Here she is keeping them out of her cup
cute picture of Jerry and James around the campfire
and just a fun picture of James
Me telling stories around the fire
Chara and Chelsea by the fire
And the big group picture
the big group silly picture
the big group serious picture
Family picture - Stacey, Carson and Madison
Family picture - Scotty, Manessa, Marissa, and Hallie
Kids picture - Jonathan, Marissa, Cameron, Carson, Madison and Hallie
Family picture - Brandon, Chelsea, Jonathan and Cameron
Family picture - Joe, Sophie-Helen and Riley
Family picture - James and Jerry
Family picture - Ben and Chara
Family picture - Ben and Chara the rock star
Riley and Chara
James and Carson
and some wood chopping action
so strong
even stronger
teaching the boys
super tough
he's going to hurt himself
And our last day at the lake we had some beautiful mist and a nice cool 41 degree weather when we left.
and yes we went for a dip in the lake in the 41 degree weather before we left because we are hard core like that.
Awesome trip. Long drive home. Can't wait til next year

Outsidelands Music Festival

Our epic summer adventure and roadtrip began with a stop up in San Francisco to see the Outsidelands Music Festival. This was a 3 day music festival held at Golden Gate park. There were 6+ stages and tons of bands to be seen over 3 days. We saw a lot of great bands and walked our little feet off all over the park.

Lenka was one of our favorites that we saw.
Cage the Elephant was great.
Dave Matthews played on Saturday and they were awesome to see again.
The weather was great the first 2 days and got quite chilly on the 3rd day.
we are just the cutest.

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-ben

Awesome camping trip

We will post more pics later but we have had an awesome camping trip
up in Lake of the Woods OR. We are heading home now and yes it's a
very long drive.

Here is a beautiful sunset on the lake

Epic summer road trip - day one

Ok so we totally ran out of gas on the first day of our roadtrip. We
drove up from san Diego to san Francisco yesterday on day one of our
trip. Our car, a prius no less, has some issues with the gas tank. It
beeps to tell me to get gas and the. Proceeds to run out of gas 5
miles later. It should beep when I have 2 gallons left and thus
aproximately 90 more miles of driving, but not so much.

As luck would have it we stopped on the 101 right by a farm that has
thier own gas pump on the farm. So after some nice farm folk and a
gallon of gas that got us back on the road and down to the next gas
station which was only 2 more miles down the road.

After that we made it into san fran with no problems and we settled
into an awesome house we are renting. We are staying right by golden
gate park which is where the Outsidelands festival is taking place and
that's why we are here.

Looking forward to seeing some great bands this weekend

Ben

night out..

so thursday ben and i headed out to the greenday concert down in SD.. - now i never would have called myself a 'huge' greenday fan.. but - after they ran around on stage for 2+ hours and put on the most amazing energetic show i have ever seen - i became more then a fan.. - in fact - ben had to stop me from quitting my job, dropping everything, and following greenday on tour..
they were pretty entertaining and put on one hell of a show..

the begnining

billie joe.. my new hero..


the crowd loving it..


pyrotechnics..

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As you may or may not know, I am working for a great new company called OneRecovery and we are pushing the boundries of online social networks and issues of recovery and healthcare. We are learning a ton during this process and meeting a world of amazing people and we'd like to share that information with others that may be interested.

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Ben

a weekend getaway

last weekend me and some ladies from work decided to get away for a girl weekend.. we headed up to the american river for some good old river rafting.. we rafted with a company called whitewater excitement. This company provided us a beautiful campsite for three days, two days of serious rafting, and 5 excellent meals. we rafted all day monday and tuesday, and then headed home tuesday afternoon..

sunday afternoon we road tripped it up..
here are the ladies unloading the van


marek and april 'helping' set up the campsite


we had a beautiful campsite called 'the meadow'

the view from our campsite

april enjoying some smores

Our second day started with the 'tunnel chute' - which is a tunnel that 'was blasted through by gold miners in the 1800s in order to divert the flow of the river away from the famous Horseshoe Bend. The Bend forces the river to be squeezed into a 100 ft long, 12-foot wide cascading spillway. The river then flows underground through a navigable tunnel.'
This rapid was the most fun.. the command our guide gave us was pretty much 'sit down and hold on'..
tunnel chute: the set up

tunnel cute: submerged

tunnel chute: the recovery

tunnel chute: success


this rafting was a blast.. we pretty much rafted only class III or class IV rapids, and we did it successfully.. we managed to never flip our boat. We did accidentally lose one of our rafters.. lizard was trying to demonstrate how slippery the boat was and managed to slip right off the front of our boat.. no worries - working as a team - we quickly had the lizard queen back in our boat where she belonged.. - other then that we stayed safe and sound, and had the time of our lives.. -
we had so much fun we are planning another trip as soon as possible.. - only this time i might might let ben come along.. after seeing the pictures - ben was not thrilled at being left at home all alone..
either way - we had the best time.. and looking forward to our next adventure..