Memorial Day Weekend

Jacob worked Saturday so we had a regular school day, but he was off on both Sunday and Monday. Sunday morning we went to church and then came home for lunch afterwards. Then Jacob worked on getting the coordinates ready for us to go geo caching (http://www.geocaching.com/). He didn’t tell us where we were going. So we all piled into the suburban and headed off. We drove along hwy 97 towards Chiloquin which is right along Klamath Lake, and the view is gorgeous!!!! Austin spotted 8 bald eagles soaring above a mountain ridge. We ended up at Collier State Park which has a really neat old logging museum. We visited their gift shop and walked along the trails looking at all the old logging equipment. They also have a bunch of old homesteading cabins and we went around to them looking in all the windows. The park is along a beautiful little creek where we were able to see two Canada geese with their three little goslings. Then we walked across a little foot bridge where the kids had fun throwing rocks and sticks into the water. Right before we were going to leave Jacob found two big trout swimming up stream so we got to watch them for awhile. We also spotted a little snake that tried to squirm between Aleigha’s feet to which she did a little dance while screamingJ. We found our first cache there at the logging museum and then our next one across the hwy at the day use area of the park. We took a break there and let the kids play on the swings, then set off again to find more caches.

On Monday we had heard that there was going to be a parade so we decide we should probably get there around 8:30 since it started at 9:30. We decided we would pick up doughnuts and eat them while we waited for the parade to start. When we got there Jacob dropped us off so we could go grab a seat and he would run over to the store and get the doughnuts. We were surprised to see that there weren’t very many people there yet, but thrilled we could sit pretty much anywhere we wanted. We found a great spot in the sun since apparently we are not the smartest and had worn shorts. I brought Ethan cheerios to munch on which he thought was wonderful until he discovered what everyone else was eating then he wanted nothing to do with the cheerios. He also managed to dump a glass full of milk in my lap so that I looked like I had wet myself.  Then he threw a fit because I wouldn’t let him down to run around on the street which still had cars driving by. By the time the parade started the streets were still quite empty though we heard people saying it was a good turn out. The kids had a great time watching all the floats go by and then 20min. after the parade had started it was over. We headed back home and grabbed some pb&jelly sandwiches to take with us and headed off again to the Tulle Lake national wildlife refuge to do some more geo caching and see some of the birds before they headed off for the summer. We stopped at a couple of caches on the way one of which was at camp Tulle Lake, an old POW camp we had never noticed before, though we had driven right past it.  Our next stop was the visitors center where we ate our lunch at one of their  picnic tables. The visitors center had a bunch of great displays our personal favorite was a bald eagle (stuffed of course) made to look like it had just attacked a goose and was eating it (I know that sounds gross but you should have seen it, it really was very cool). We then hiked up to an old stone look out that had been built by some of the POW’s from the before mentioned camp. The view from here was amazing. We then took the auto tour around the marshes and got to see hundreds of white pelicans, thousands (I am not exaggerating) of red winged black birds, as well as Canada geese, ducks, grebes, and many others that I don’t know what they were. We also saw a raccoon that was trying to cross the road but got scared when he saw us and turned and ran back. When we finished there we  did some more caching and then headed home to have a bbq.