Life with the Conleys

We spent Thanksgiving in LA with Josh's family. We landed at LAX late Wednesday night and flew out early Monday morning. We had a great time with his family. Josh's mom made a delicious Thanksgiving dinner and we spent the day catching up with family and friends. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday went by really fast. We ate at In-in-Out, went to the beach, Josh's sister and I saw "Breaking Dawn", visited with Josh's cousin, visited with friends, played with the dog, and ate more good food. It was a pretty relaxed visit and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  Early Monday morning we left LA for Cancun. This was only the second time I had traveled internationally and I was a little nervous about going through customs. My anxiety about customs was completely unfounded though. Once we landed in Cancun it took less than 30 to go trough baggage claim and customs. We got lucky and when we pushed it button it turned green instead of red. If the light had turned red I...

I know what you are thinking, "Great, another post about hiking. Don't they do anything else?" Well, no. We don't do anything else BUT this isn't just a hike post. We went camping too. :) And thanks to me, the camping part is a story worth telling. Since our attempt at an overnight on Labor Day weekend was a bust we were determined to make it work this time.  It gets dark too early now to leave work and have enough time to backpack in, so our plan was to car camp near the trail head and do the hike the next day. I started looking at different places to camp and found out that a burn ban was in effect, which means that you can't have a campfire unless you stay in one of a few designated campgrounds. Campgrounds are not my favorite but we really wanted to have a fire because camping without a fire is crappy, and we needed a fire since foil dinners are tough to manage without one. Friday after work we set out and arrived at the campground around 7:30pm. We drov...

Last weekend Josh and I planned on an overnight backpack trip. Sadly neither of us could get off work early on Friday and hiking in the dark to a new place that may or may not have had available campsites seemed like a bad idea. In retrospect we should have gone up on Friday night because the trail was easy and there were plenty of places to camp. Oh well, it was still a delightful day trip. We started hiking just after 8am and it took an hour to get to lake. Josh started fishing as soon as he could. He caught some fish (3 to be exact) but they were all real small. The weather was beautiful while he was fishing and the sky was nearly cloudless. After an hour or so a few clouds started to come in so we decided to hike to the top of peak on the side of the lake to try and get a nice view  before any more clouds came in. Turns out we should have hiked to the top of the peak and then fished because by the time we made it to the top Mt Rainier was partially hidden in clouds. It was sti...

Seattle has a bridge troll. He is big and ugly and dirty. So naturally, we went to see him. Freemont Troll The car in his hand is real. It's a VW bug. L to R: The Pants, Becky, Naomi, Ashley, Hannah, Rachel Josh's mom, Becky, came to town last week and we decided to take her to see some Seattle landmarks. The first stop was the Freemont Troll. After the troll we had a picnic at Gas Works Park. For dessert we headed to Molly Moon's Ice Cream, which is apparently a big deal here. I had a single scoop of salted caramel ice cream and I felt like it was a salt lick on a sugar cone. Everyone else had more standard flavors and they seemed to be good. The ice cream shop ended our day of tourism and a fun and interesting day in Seattle. It was great to spend some time with Josh's mom. We loved having her here and hope it isn't too long before we get to see her and the rest of our California family again.

Last Saturday the Navy's Blue Angels were putting on an air show over Lake Washington. We planned on watching from I-90, which they close to cars during the show but on our way to the I-90 we found a neighborhood with a pretty good view. It's amazing what both the pilots and the aircraft can do.  

Two days after moving into a new apartment we left for a Mendenhall family camping trip in Idaho. The flight  to Boise was uneventful until we disembarked, then I spewed. I felt fine until we landed but then got real nauseous. I kept thinking that if I could just get off the plane I would be able to recover. Well, I made it off the plane, but just barely. Luckily I had one of the air sickness bags with me so I could spew and walk without making too much of a mess. It was a memorable start to our vacation. The next morning we left for Black Lake. My dad, Josh, and I crammed into a 1986, two wheel drive Isuzu P'up, towing a trailer with a 4-wheeler and canoe. There were several times I wasn't sure we would make it. That poor truck just doesn't tow, and going up hills we would loose speed at an alarming rate. At the top of a particularly steep slope we were only going 25 mph (speed limit was 65). It was quite the rig. We eventually made it to the lake and found a nice camp...