Saturday, August 22, 2009

From Colorado to Vashon

We drove from Colorado to Washington caravan-style with Erik's parents. On our three day journey, we tried to cover 400-500 miles each day and camped at night in their RV. At one rest stop, we looked out into an open area and saw a bunch of little prairie dogs sticking their heads up out of the ground.

Claire and I crept forward s-l-o-w-l-y to get a better shot...

...but we didn't really need to worry because they were obviously used to people with cameras. This guy practically posed for me. "Alright, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."
Right after I took that picture, another prairie dog started coming right toward us, and almost touched our toes! I was too freaked out about a wild animal coming so close to our flip-flopped feet to snap a photo.


Our second day of driving was Gramma's birthday, so Claire decorated a cake for her that night. Remember the extra batter from the dump truck cake that went into the regular loaf pan? We found a great use for it!
It's a little hard to see in the picture, but she wrote "Gramma" in black frosting and then used the star tips to decorate all around the top and sides in yellow and blue.


We stayed in Baker City, OR on the 2nd night, so we decided to visit the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center the next morning. We both felt that we had gained a pretty good knowledge of life on the trail from the computer game (smile), but thought we owed it to ourselves to at least check it out.

These were models of the covered wagons. I was surprised at how small they were. No "Little House on the Prairie"-sized wagons here.

This was the view from outside the museum. Inside, there was an observation window that showed the same view, but with a map next to it showing the location of the actual Oregon Trail.

Thought this moss on the rocks looked kind of cool.

Inside were displays of "lifelike" people and animals with pre-recorded voices playing as you walked by. Claire liked this one of the shepherd.

She also liked the buffalo.


Erik liked the buffalo too -- in the computer game. While everyone else was wasting their time trying to shoot rabbits, he could shoot one buffalo and be set for food for a LONG time. Yes, I think we learned all we needed to learn from that game...

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