From Charlie's wedding, we met my mom and sister in Golden, Colorado as they were taking all the young cousins to a dude ranch near Estes Park, Colorado. It was fun to see Sophie and Sue again and mom was looking like she was already tired having driven all the way from Phoenix the day before. We bid our kids adieu and got in our car to head home through Wyoming and Montana. I drove most of the way as Balin had to work, but it actually wasn't so bad. (I like my car for road trips!)
When we got home 17 hours later, we took some time to enjoy ourselves by just hanging out and relaxing. I think Balin headed off to work so I actually did get a chance to relax and do some putzing around the house. The second night home Balin walked in the door and said, "Mark invited us to go to Walla Walla overnight with he and his wife Sarah. He's flying a helicopter over. Do you want to go?"
Helicopter? Seriously? I'm a little afraid of heights I have to admit and the idea of being off the ground in a small vehicle kind of freaks me out. But, hey, what the heck. "Sure, let's do this!"
I'm so glad I did. It was such fun to ride in a helicopter over parts of the Northwest I would have never seen otherwise. So cool. I love the take off and landing part, where you just kind of hover over the ground. I'd go in a helicopter again in a heartbeat!
Mark and Sarah arranged for a car and driver to pick us up the day we arrived and take us to multiple wineries. I didn't know what a good idea that was until about 2 wineries into our day. Holy cow! A couple of sips of wine here and there really add up. Every winery was fun and unique with really good wines, which we bought plenty of. Turns out though that only the wineries themselves can ship wine - we didn't know that - so we ended up taking most of the wine home on the helicopter under our seats. Next time we'll ship from the wineries.
We got home Thursday afternoon from Walla Walla and the following day started another perfect set of days. It was a girls weekend (the boys ended up coming) without kids in the beautiful basin of the
Coeur d'alene river. My dear friend Anna flew in from Prescott while my new dear friend, Gen Wimberly, came over from next door. (How fun to have such a kindred spirit right down the street! I am so blessed!) Gen packed up her pop-up trailer and Anna and I cooked up some yummy food, packed our bikes and fly fishing gear and headed out. It was such an amazing weekend. Good conversation, good food, Gin and Tonics with our feet in the river, spectacular mountain biking, cool evenings with our fly rods in the river. Seriously. How blessed am I that I have friends who want to go play outside in God's creation - without real bathrooms or showers. They are hard to come by I tell you!
The boys, Kai and Balin, ended up coming and sharing our camper with us for two nights and went on an "epic" mountain bike ride for 30 miles. Kai's catchphrase is quickly becoming, "There's supposed to be a trail here somewhere". He and Balin are quickly becoming great adventure buddies, going on mountain bike rides that are, well, more like bushwacking then riding. The positive piece for we women is that they scouted the good part of the trail so we ladies had an amazing 7 mile ride on Saturday.
Of course we ladies made up for not having proper toilets and showers by going to the spa on Monday in Coeur d'alene. It was so nice to hop in the steam shower and wash away all that dirt and grime. I was so dirty that even after I showered, as I was toweling off, brown was coming off on the towels.
That, in my book, was a good weekend!
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