Monday, July 06, 2009

Road Trip 2009: Leg 4

The morning after we arrived was Graduation Day. Mel woke Randy up by telling him that some of his friends had vandalized her van during that night and that he needed to come and see.

Of course everyone else knew that they were getting him up early to surprise him with a car for a graduation gift.

This video is hilarious. Check out how Mel had to point to the car for Randy to even look in that direction! 6:00AM was just way too early!!




After Randy's surprise, Jeff and I headed to Spokane to pick up his mom, Jerilyn, and Hannah our niece.

On our way back to Bridgeport, we stopped at Grand Coulee Dam. This was the 2nd dam we'd stopped at on this trip. It was incredible. It's amazing just how big and powerful these dams are.

We stopped at the vista point, a few miles from the dam. For some perspective on the size of the dam, the little holes that you can see kind of in the middle of this picture are so big that 2 semi-trucks could drive through them side by side!




Before returning to Bridgeport, we made a stop another dam: the Chief Joseph Dam. This one is actually in Bridgeport. In fact, Jeff's brother, Bill, works at the dam.
You can walk down stairs into the river. This was as far as I wanted to go. There are at least two or three more levels that are under the river.

Hannah and me at the bottom of the stairs

One of the main purposes of our trip was to attend Randy's graduation from high school. I brought my camera to the ceremony, but I didn't take a single picture! Terrible, I know.

The next day was Bridgeport Days. It's kicked off with a parade.

Here's a picture of Bill and his son, Billy, kicking off the parade with a half-track.The finale of the parade was some mariachi dancers. They were neat to watch. I took a video, too, but I was too far away to catch any of the music on the video, so here is just a picture.

There were a lot of cars and a couple of floats between the half-track and the dancers, but I didn't really get any pictures of them. It was a pretty fun parade--especially for all the kids in Bridgeport. There was a LOT of candy being thrown to the crowd.

Cousins RaeAnne and Parker wanted to show that they were glued at the hip (being good "buddies" using the buddy system as we walked from the parade to the park), but couldn't quite get their hips together.

There! That's better.

At the park, Eli and RaeAnne bought inflatable swords.

This was really fun! This tricked out car was actually in the parade! It would adjust its hydraulics while driving along the parade route; it was very cool to watch, but I didn't get any pictures during the parade. I was glad to see it parked like this when it was time to go.

Jeff remembers that they would always spill the Chief Joseph Dam during Bridgeport Days, but Bill informed us that it wasn't going to happen this year. We were totally bummed.

Imagine our surprise when we got a phone call saying it was spilling! We grabbed our shoes and were out the door so fast! It was quite an experience to see.

First, we when to the top overlook to get a great aerial view.

When we got down to the base, we were suprised to see some of our family had come to see the spill, too.

From Left to Right: Brianna, Hannah, Diva, RaeAnne, Sallie, Me

Here is a picture of Jeff down at the bottom of the stairs. With the spilling, he was able to go down about two more landings further than Hannah and I had the day before.

Sallie was not impressed. Every time the water was splash, she would jump back as far as she could. We tried to get a better picture or a video, but she wouldn't get close again.




After taking lots of pictures of the dam spilling, we rounded up most of the kids and headed to Alta Lake. It was fun to go swimming in a lake that was in the mountains. It was pretty awe-inspiring for this MN girl. We've got lots of lakes out here, but they are not nestled in the mountains like this one.
Back at Bill & Mel's, RaeAnne and Sallie had so much fun together! Here they are taking a rest. After a few days at Bill & Mel's it was time to head back home. Here are a few pictures from our home stretch.


Sallie would do this cute thing while sitting on Jeff's lap. She would tuck her head into the holes in our steering wheel. I wish we'd gotten a better picture. It was so funny!

We all know how much Jeff likes to get Sallie to sing! Here is a final video of the two of them singing while driving down the freeway.


1 comment:

BabyoverBroadway said...

Where are the updates? I keep checking!

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