Oregon Part 1 - Silver Creek

In late July we last minute headed west to Oregon for 10 days. There were a combination of reasons for the shortly planned trip, I'll name a few: Austin's parents were planning on moving Dental offices and Austin was wanting to help, my Grandpa was sick and in the hospital (he's home now after more than a month, thank goodness!), Austin's family from Southern Arizona was up visiting, Miranda was due to head back to college and won't get another break until Christmas, Andrew had a week break after taking the bar, Maisie was dying to see her cousins, oh and Oregon tap water. Our time was jam packed with family, but it felt good to see everyone we could. Sometimes visiting our home town becomes super stressful because we try to squeeze so much in and try to see as many people as possible, but this time we saw who we could and kind of left it at that. I was dying to stay a whole week more, but austin had to get back to work and we had to return the rental car.

So as our luck would have it we happened to visit during the hottest week of the summer. It was over 105 a handful of those days and let me tell you Oregon is not built for that kind of heat. It gets heavy and uncomfortable quick, but at least drinking copious amounts of water is a treat because the water tastes so good (am I right?). I was born and raised in the Northwest and I can count on one hand how many days were over 100 while growing up, but in this one week EVERY stinking day was crazy hot. It made coming back to our high desert climate very refreshing.

On one of our first days in town we decided to take the kids to Silver Creek Falls, where we were hoping would be a slightly cooler, but it was still hot. Too hot to hike that's for sure- especially with children. So we stayed by the creek portion of the park. The creek felt so good to wade around in (yay for melted glacier water!). Maisie had so much fun going chest deep into the water and turning over rocks in search of crawdads (no luck though). Then there was Ellie, who kept trying to dive in head first and give her Mama a heart attack. That little girl is fearless. She just goes and deals with the repercussions like a champ, even if its a nose full of water. I like that about her, but it's all fun and games until she ends up going to the ER with various broken bones or some other injury.

As you could tell, it was beautiful, but don't let the beauty of the cool lush forest fool you, it was HOT!