Down By the River - Summer Nostalgia

Now that summer is over, the kids are back in school and the days are getting shorting, I feel nostalgic.  The summer fun we had only a few weeks ago seems a long way off now.

We took a camping trip a few weeks ago in the Mt. St. Helens area. During the day we played and took in the local sights.  In the evenings, we often took the kids down to different parks along the Toutle River to let them wade and play in the sand.

The kids really enjoyed experimenting with erosion.  OK, I thought it looked like a geology lab.  They thought they were making a cool waterfall by digging cliffs into the sand then pouring water over it.

This is a representation of Mt. St. Helens.  It's creator enthusiastically threw sand up to simulate the big eruption for my photo :)

One evening we saw four river otters swim by us.  I was a little slow with my camera.  I got a great photo of the back of one otter's head and a blurry photo of one floating on his back.  They kind of came out looking like the Loch Ness Monster.

One evening there were hundreds of little frogs.  The kids had a great time catching them.

There is a lot of volcanic ash along the river from the eruption.  One park we visited had a volleyball court and play structure built with ash instead of sand.  I think this piece of play equipment is the best use of ash I have seen.  The kids loved it.

After a few hours by the river we came back to camp for dinner.  After dinner we would sit around the fire and wind down with smores and chat.  Very relaxing!

What are some of your favorite summer memories?

Camping at Seaquest State Park

We're bug bitten, sun browned and dusty.  We've been camping for a week with several other families.  We stayed at Seaquest State Park in Washington.  Seaquest State Park is located near Mt. St. Helens at the edge of the Cascade Mountains at an elevation of about 500 ft.  The campground is a beautiful forested area, full of tall trees, ferns and mossy rocks.  

The kids loved having that play structure so close (we had around 8 to 10 kids with us as families came and went).  We had 3 campgrounds reserved for our group, so they had a large area to play in without disturbing other campers.

Across the road from the campground is Silver Lake, a nature trail and Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center.  We didn't even have to worry about road traffic because there is a pedestrian tunnel linking the campground to the visitor center.  The visitor center had some really good displays and a great movie.  We did not get to it until our last day, but I kind of wish we had gone there earlier in the trip.

I really enjoyed walking the nature trail, which ran about a mile along the shore of the lake and through a marshy, wetland area.  Here are some photos from the nature trail, which we walked several times.

We saw a huge frog, so big I would have to hold it in two hands.  There were also lots of big, blue dragonflies.  It took me a lot of tries to get a photo of one.  It would hover until I got my camera focused, then dart away when I took the shot.  Dragonflies are very impressive fliers!  There were also a lot of beautiful wildflowers.


We had a lot more adventures and a great day trip up to Johnston Ridge on Mt. St. Helens, but this post is getting pretty long.  I will write about Mt. St. Helens later this week.

Until then, enjoy your labor day!  We will be having a BBQ with our friends.  What will you be doing?

OT: Frogs!

While we were camping this summer, my youngest son found some little frogs living near the boat ramp. They lived in a pile of broken asphalt on the lake shore, and when it was warm enough they came out to... well I guess I don't know exactly what they do. Frog things? They didn't seem to go far from the asphalt pile.

The frogs really delighted my son - he spent hours watching them move around. He was especially pleased that he was the one who discovered them.

I had one picture of 3 frogs together, but the exposure was bad, so I won't make you suffer through it :)

These little guys are really well camouflaged, so I had to zoom in really close and then crop the picture so they would be visible. It was a little bit like photographing jewelry, except these guys kept hopping around!