She loves Dude 7.18.15

Jeralyn's favorite hike and camping spot (and mountain) is Dude Mountain.  Quent took her hiking and camping overnight; and of course she LOVED it!  They really enjoy their time together.

Jeralyn brought her little red cup for berry picking.

A spider among the berries.

Berry picking is very serious work.

I LOVE this photo of Jeralyn because it totally shows her personality and enthusiasm for life.  She just loves life.  Seriously.  Everything is fun.  She's ready to take on every day.  Life is awesome.  Adventurous.  Overflowing with joy.  This girl lives life abundantly...in JOY!

Jeralyn was talking on the phone with me in this photo. She's so cute and she loves to talk to Josh on speaker phone.  Josh gets REALLY excited to hear her voice.  One of these days we will join them.

She's wearing a hat my Aunt Judy made for me when I was about Jeralyn's age.

And this has to be one of my most favorite photos.  Pretty amazing!

Jeralyn is holding dragonfly larvae.

I'm not sure if Jeralyn was already in bed at this point...because I only see Quent's boots.

Land of the "midnight" sun...except it doesn't stay light *that* long in Southeast Alaska.  Close, but not that close.

"Reading" 7.11.15

Jeralyn asked me to put Joshua next to her on the chair so she could read him a bedtime story.  So sweet!  I love Josh's expression!

When they are eating 7.5.15

Sometimes the best times to take pictures are when they are eating (and still).

Ferrying HOME! 6.23.15

The car deck on this ferry was the most packed I have ever seen.  Lots of cars and passengers!

It was about a 6-hour ferry ride back home.  We stayed busy playing, reading, coloring, walking around, and eating.

Jeralyn playing a game.

Quent took Joshua outside to run off some energy (in hopes of taking a nap--which never happened).

Beautiful day to be out on the water!

Home sweet home!

Taking down camp 6.23.15

Well, the day came (after 10 nights of camping) that it was time to go home.  (Yes, I was silently excited to know I would be sleeping in my very own bed that night!)

But wait, let me back up.  The night before we found a beautiful campground and a nice site within walking distance to the beach.  We swam and played in the water and enjoyed the beautiful evening.

Jeralyn loved helping set up and take down the tent.  Such a great helper!

This was how we washed our dishes at most of our camp sites.  Quent would heat water in a pan and we had a sponge to wash the dishes and then we would rinse the suds off over the cold campfire pit.

Jeralyn was brushing her teeth in this photo.

After this we drove toward Prince Rupert to wait in line to go through customs before getting on the ferry.

Hazeltons (one of them) 6.22.15

We drove and drove.  And listened to audio books.  Around this time we were listening to the story Heidi.  Very sweet story!  

Anyway...we stopped at one of the Hazeltons (Quent can't remember and I certainly do not).  East or west?  We had a picnic lunch at this pretty spot.  Not bad, aye?

Beautiful Morning 6.22.15

Smithers, we will come back...someday!

Swim & Camp 6.21.15

 It was a warm day, so we went to the beach at the park we were camping at and spent a good amount of time playing in the water.  Jeralyn met some friends.  After swimming, we went out for ice cream.  Yum!

Most nights after we put the kids to bed, Quent and I would play cards.  The kids did great sleeping in the tent.  I was surprised at how well they did, honestly.

Foxes, Ants, and Silly Kids 6.21.15

Smithers, British Columbia was my favorite place to spend our time on our vacation.

We woke up to another beautiful day and prepared to go on another short walk/hike.

Jeralyn was building a "house" with our firewood.

Playing

The trail we walked on led us to Driftwood Canyon that has a lot of fossils in the rock: birds, bugs, fish, plants.  These were some of the pieces found by other visitors.  Jeralyn was looking at them.

We had lunch at the trail head.  Here's the kids with Quent.

When I was sitting at the picnic table, I noticed ants scurrying about on the ground and I noticed it was like an ant "highway".  So I followed where they were coming/going and they led me to their ginormous ant hill.  I wish we would have put something in this photo for scale. I would say this one was about 2 feet high and 4 feet wide.  And it's moving about with lots and lots and lots of ants.  These were the ant hills the bears were interested in at the campground I mentioned in a previous post.  I have never in my life seen anything like this.  We found a lot of ant hills on our trip.  And I think one time Jeralyn and Joshua got a little too close to an ant hill and there were ants crawling on them.  Eeek!

And then we found the same group of foxes, but this time with their mother.  Jeralyn had fun watching them play.

S'mores 6.20.15

Another night of s'mores:

6.19.15

Again, I cannot remember the name of the city we were in at this campground, but it was here that I discovered gigantic ant hills.  The campground host told us the bears were coming out to eat the ant larvae.  We never did see any bears though.

The kids enjoyed playing at the park.  We figured our very quickly in the beginning of our trip that campgrounds with playgrounds were a must for us and that Jeralyn preferred flush toilets over pit toilets.  So we did our best to satisfy her.  I don't blame her!

It started raining during the night and poor Quent had to pack up another wet tent.

6.18.15

Wow, I cannot remember where we were this day/night.  We stayed at a campground/RV park that had a pool.  It was hot when we arrived.  So we quickly made dinner and then played in the pool...all before it rained.  And then the rain wanted to be our friend for a couple of days.  Eh.

Quent packed up the wet tent in the morning and we drove into Prince George to have breakfast.  Afterward, we took the kids to this really cool Children's Museum.  They had this really cool room where the kids played and played.  It was like a glorified tot gym.  They loved it!  A lot of the locals had their children there and I met a nice lady who gave me her contact info in case if we are ever in the area again.

Robson/Jasper 6.17.15

We spent 2 nights near Mt. Robson.  It was a nice campground and there was a playground nearby that the kids spent a lot of time at (which I realize we have no pictures of--oops!).  They had an ampi-theater that Jeralyn liked to dance on the stage of.  Silly kids!

Jeralyn is ready to take on another day!

Making lunch for our hike.

The start of our hike up a trail toward Robson.

We didn't get too far on the trail because it started to rain and then did not want to stop.  We were prepared for the rain, but it just didn't seem worth getting wet and cold, so we turned around and drove toward Jasper instead.  It was a beautiful drive.

On the way back the clouds parted and Robson unveiled some of it's glory.  It's one of those mountains that you don't get the privilege of seeing the whole thing at once very often.

And then we found this cool bridge with some fast-moving water below.