Mount Rainier

I look like a nut. I love this pic! The snow kept falling off the trees and onto my head.

   I have been to Mount Rainier so many times that I kinda have to chose just one trip to talk about because we don't want a fifty page vacation story. However, I would like to state here that Mount Rainier is fantastic at every season. There isn't a bad time to go. There just isn't. However, in the winter, many of the roads and trails are closed due to the snow, and you can't even enter the park unless your car is prepared for snow, meaning snow tires or chains. That does put a damper on some people's trip planning, but in the winter there is skiing and sledding and snowboarding and snowshoeing.
   So I am going to talk about our winter trip, which was my daughter's 9th birthday trip. We have been since then, but this trip was really outstanding and memorable. My whole family went, which means my mom, my sister, her two kids, and my daughter and I; also this was my daughter's birthday. She had never had such an extravagant birthday before, and she hasn't had a trip this extravagant since. But the timing was right and we wanted to go snowshoeing. We had never gone snowshoeing before, and I am not sure what possessed us, but we were gonna do it. My family gets like that.
   We stayed at the National Park Inn for this trip. A lot of people like Paradise Inn, and I like that inn too, but Paradise is closed for the winter. You can't get to that section of the park because of the massive amounts of snow and ice. National Park Inn stays open year round.

We saw this awesome looking bird from the porch.

    The one thing to remember about both of these inns are that they are historic and have not been tampered with a lot. Some of the rooms do not have their own shower and toilet; there are public ones for everyone to use, but some of the newer rooms do have a private bathroom. We always specify that we want a bathroom. If we didn't want our own private bathroom, we would go camping, not stay at an Inn.
    The roads were icy, so when we got to the National Park Inn, the car stayed parked for the entire six days that we were there. (Yes, we tend to take week-long vacations. We like to really sink our teeth into a vacation. Such long stays are not really needed if you don't want to stay that long.) We left the Inn; the minivan did not. No one wanted to drive.
    My sister's kids got sick on this trip, so even though she was with us, we didn't see as much of her because they stayed in the room a lot. We did see some of her, but we need to get her up there again so she can visit when her kids aren't sick, because now that I think of it, I think this is the only time my sister has gone. She gets less vacation time then me, and I get less than my mom. As such, my daughter has spent more time on Mount Rainier than I have, because even when  I can't go, my mom often takes her as a travel buddy.

She liked sledding, and those are my gloves she is wearing. Why?

    I loved snowshoeing! It was really fun. We didn't really know what we were doing, but we figured it all out eventually, and there was no one there to laugh at us for our inexperience. Mount Rainier in the winter is really beautiful, and you really get a sense of isolation when you are out on the trails in your snowshoes. My daughter loved sledding on her sled. She had a blast with that. She liked snowshoeing as well, and the pattern of our days tended to be that we would spend the morning outside snowshoeing and sledding, and then in the afternoon we would hang around the inn. They have a huge porch, with  comfy chairs all along the length of the porch, and you can sit and relax and look at all the snow. They also have a large common room, with a lot of seating, and you can sit by the fireplace and read a book or knit (my mom knits) or whatever. These things we did in the afternoons, when we were tired from all the morning activity.
    During the other seasons, there are a lot more open trails and all of the visitor centers are open, and there are ranger programs, and all of these things are really good. But Mount Rainier is different for each season, and this winter trip was really nice. I loved all the snow and all the isolation and peace. You can really get away from the rest of the world, especially since cell signals don't work and there is no wifi and the inn doesn't have TVs. You really have to leave all that technology behind and just enjoy your visit.

Isn't Mount Rainier beautiful?

   In case anyone is wondering, all of the vacation pics I have posted of all my vacations where taken by my mom. She is quite the photographer, I think. And in case you are interested, the link (in blue) to Mount Rainier, so that you can find out more and maybe plan your own trip :) 

Ocean Shores = Awesome

My daughter and myself at Ocean Shores. We did wade a lot.

   I was kinda wracking my brain for a prewritten post to schedule while I was one vacation. I want to keep content flowing while I am gone, but I also have to keep content flowing right now, so that is a lot of writing. But then I thought, well, last post I talked about Disney, so why not continue with a vacations past theme? I am not so sure that anyone wants to hear about all my vacations, but I love to go on vacation, so I am going to go for it. I plan for my vacations all year, because I need time to save money and request time off and all that good stuff. Sometimes, however, I cannot be so spend-y as to go to places like Yellowstone and Disney. I have to be mindful of budget at all times. Who doesn't? No one I know of; we are all being mindful of money right now.
   But there are often many places that you can go to that are nearby to you, and as such, aren't as costly. I have two nearby places that I love to go to: Ocean Shores and Mount Rainier. I love these places. They are great places to go and relax and they are obviously very different. Washington is great like that; there are many diverse places to go, we have mountains, oceans, and even a temperate rain forest! (It's near Forks, haha! You can see the home of the Sparkle Fairies while you are there.) I haven't been to the rain forest yet, but I have tentative plans to go, in the far, far future. (Not that far!)
    The last vacation I went on a vacation, I went to Ocean Shores. I went with my mom and my daughter; my sister couldn't come. She didn't have vacation time, so we want to go again when she can come. My sister is zany, and we miss the zany loudness that is signature to her personality. But my mom and I had a great time.
    Pretty much, we got to our hotel at Ocean Shores, and we parked, and we didn't leave. I love the beach, but if you are used to the beaches at Florida, or along the Southern areas, where I originally come from, then you do need to understand that Northern beaches do seem to be different, from my experience. The water is not the same color and the sand is different, and there are more rocks and plant-life and not so much vast sandy shores of white or yellow sand. Plus, the water is cold. REALLY FREAKING COLD.
    Nevertheless, the beach is beautiful, and Ocean Shores is really awesome, so I am not saying all this to downplay the beach here. I am just saying different: not saying yuck. The beach here is so awesome, and the birds that you can see are amazing. We saw so many ocean birds! A lot of pelicans and seagulls and little birds that I don't know the name for and they were all eating crab. We would go walk the beach every single morning as the tide went in, and these huge crabs would get caught in the tide pools. Then the birds would come get the crabs and smash them on rocks or hard ground, and they would feast. All the birds were really fat, and I was really jealous. I love crab. With all that crab-eating going on around me, I ended up ordering crab dishes for most of my meals. Soooo good.

I thought the pelicans were so neat to watch.

    I didn't want to go in the water at first. You don't see a whole lot of people getting in the water at Ocean Shores. The water is cold, and it's also rough. But my daughter really wanted to, so we let her. Then the next thing I know, my mom was in the damn water. I was like, "MOM!" I wasn't expecting her to get in. But that is my mom for you; never think that you can predict what she is going to do. She went out pretty far too, which worried me, because my daughter went with her, and I have made my helicopter mom disease no secret. I was nervous; they laughed at me. My mom is a bad influence, but you can't exactly scold your mother, so sometimes I just find myself suffering. I do not suffer in silence, however. Then she retaliates by bringing up all the crazy and wild stuff that I did, and then I like to bring up the fact that she grounded me when I did that stuff, and in fact, she still sometimes threatens to ground both me and my sister, even though we are adults.
   But this was a very relaxing vacation. My mom has the corner on stressful jobs; she is an oncology nurse, so she really needs the destressing time, but I can use this time as well. Getting away from the daily routine and away from all the stress is really something that we all need to do every once in a while.

This is a really beautiful and relaxing beach.

Here is the link (in blue) to the City of Ocean Shores, if you might be interested in planning your own trip or just looking at info. 

Vacation! For Two Weeks :)

    I am writing this blog post in advance so that my blog can still have a little new content while I am on vacation. At the time that I actually publish this, I will be on my way to Yellowstone!!! So excited. I am going with my mom, my sister, her two kids, and my daughter and we are all going to pile into my sister's minivan and go! We are all very excited. But I didn't want my blog to be completely inactive while I was on vacation, and you can schedule posts to publish, so I thought, why not write a few!
   Of course, you might be wondering why  I don't just take my laptop and publish while I am on vacation. Don't worry -- I will write up some good Yellowstone vacation posts when I come back, but to be brutally honest, my laptop is no longer portable. My family understands that I am a tightwad for certain expenses, so they don't say much when they look at my ancient laptop held together with tape. But what would the public think? Plus, I don't think the tape would hold together for travel. My laptop is stationary at home because when you move my laptop, you can hear the hinges creaking and cracking. I am so going to have to get a new one soon, but I am waiting until after vacation. If I bought one now, that would eat heavily into my vacation money, and I just won't do that. I have been saving for this vacation for a year. I had to scrimp and scrimp and pinch pennies left and right, and I am not wasting that money on a laptop!

Teacups spin, and I get sick, so my sis took the kiddos on this one.

    We will be gone for two weeks, so I am going to write up some posts in advance to publish, so you'll have something to read from me if you want. And then when I come back, I will try to have some good pictures and topics about our family vacation to amuse you with.
   The last vacation that we did as an entire family was to Disneyland, and that was a blast. That vacation was mine and my daughter's second visit, but my sister's and her kids first visit, and we had a great time. The best time we had was on the It's A Small World ride. Now, I know that some people think that this is a dull ride, but I like this ride. And I am curious about whether or not you could actually tip that boat that we ride in. So my sister and I spent several trips trying to do that, and on the last, final good-bye trip, we shared a boat with a dad and his teenage son! They participated in our attempt to tip over the small world boat. We did not succeed, but the attempt was so much fun. I hope that they had as much fun as we did. They were laughing with us, so I think so. Probably this was not the safest activity (duh, no probably to this, it wasn't safe, dumbass. Don't do this!.)
    Anyway, we didn't act like this the entire time. And we never acted like this when there was someone who really didn't appreciate our attempts. We are not the types to spoil someone else's fun. My sister's kids have the same twisted, warped personalities that seem to be genetic in our family, but we usually sat in a boat alone, and the in this case, the other family was willing! Plus, the boats are really well connected, so I was about 90% sure that we would not tip it. And I was right.
     Regardless of wild shenanigans, I will return in two weeks. So if you ask a question, and I don't answer you, hopefully you know that this is because I am on vacation. I will line up a few blog posts for scheduled posting while I am gone, but I won't be responding to questions/comments until I get back. And then I will regale you with my wild pet-the-bear Yellowstone stories. (Joking, joking.)

Disney is freaking awesome; I don't care how jaded and cranky you are. 

   Plan your own trip to Disneyland :)