Skateparcation Across the Nation: 2021

Friday, December 31, 2021

Christmas and the days that followed 2021

December 2021

Our December has been full of fun /busy stuff. Christmas parties and lots of family fun. All the kids are doing extremely well in school. Scotty is working hard and I am running around constantly like a chicken w my head cut off hahaha. Asher is still working full time saving for his mission. He only has one semester of school left until he graduates!!! Graham is the busiest right now with school, ROTC, CAP, scouts ( he just finished his Eagle!), track, and more. He’s doing so great. Pepper and Taj are excelling at a fast pace in school!! They both do gymnastics and piano. We are happy to be together and healthy. Homie hasn’t sold yet. We are thinking that if he doesn’t sell then we’ll just keep him. I have a couple trips planned coming up. Life is beautiful!!

November 9, 2021

Today we drove Homie down to Rancho Santa Margarita to be sold 😓. Whoever buys Homie will be getting an incredible trailer. Our time and season for traveling is over, for now. Hopefully Homie will sell fast and we will be able to find a smaller Homie Jr 😉

Homie

Homie is finally out of the shop!!! He has a new roof we are spending some time fixing him up before we send him to an RV lot to be sold. He was the perfect trailer for our adventure. I hope he goes to a wonderful family that will love him the way we did!!!

November 4, 2021

September 25, 2021

I uploaded these a long time ago. We are home and doing well adjusting back to busy home life. If it were up to me we’d be back on the road. But the reality is that our kids are all doing so well. Asher is moving through his Senior year while working and saving for his mission. Graham is enjoying the AFROTC at the high school and is working hard to be prepared for the application process into the Airforce Academy!! Pepper and Taj are thriving in homeschool. Scotty and I are back to working hard and being super busy.

Wednesday August 18, 2021 - Home for Three Weeks

This Sunday, we will have been home for three weeks. These last two weeks went by fast because we have been super busy. Not fun busy like the trip was, but family busy - And we have been trying to get moved back into the house. That task has been much less fun than swimming in the pool or traveling around the US:))

Tuesday August 10, 2021 - First Week Home

Magnets are all hung up!! I still need to put a boarder around the sheet metal but I just love looking at these!!! So many memories!!

Sunday August 1, 2021 Home Sweet Home

The ward in Barstow was very close to our campground. It started at 10 AM. Our check out time was 11 AM so I talked to the KOA office and asked for a late check out. They were OK with that:). We went to church then we hurried home to change our clothes and get out on the road towards home! Next Sunday we will be in our home ward.

Saturday July 31, 2021 - Travel Day to Barstow, California.

Here are all the bikes laid out ready to be packed into Homie for their ride home. Packing this time is a bit different. The next time we unpack the bikes, we will be putting them into our garage at home. Weird.

Friday July 30, 2021 - Zion National Park - The Narrows

The Millers drove up to Zion's today with us. It's been so fun to have them around this week. I have't taken a lot of pictures ( I think I'm winding down from being a Japanese Tourist) ;). We have spent time, mostly in the evenings, with them. With the heat we usually meat in the pool at night;))

I love it when Taj is snuggly. He melts my heart!

This morning Scotty and I got up really early to ride! It's so super hot here that you basically have the early morning hours and the evening hours to be outside. We hit the morning just right. We rode up part of the St. George Marathon course. Then we took a turn and rode down Snow Canyon. Beautiful.

After the ride, the kids went to the skate park. Then we played with my parents. That was basically it. I feel like we are all tired. We are definitely winding down from the trip. Getting ready to be home.

Tuesday July 27, 2021 Lazy Day in St. George

Today we were lazy. It was nice. BTW, it's hot here. Like 100 degrees:)). Here is the paddle board that blew up over in Lake Powell. I took it back today.

At 5 AM, Scotty and I got up to finish prepping Homie to leave. We pulled away from Lake Powell at 5:45 AM and were on our way to St. George, UT. We had to leave early so that Scotty could have reception for his morning calls. While at Lake Powell, we had NO reception and NO wifi. It was nuts. Our plan was to drive to my parents house in St. George super early so Scotty could work there all morning, then at 1 PM we would go to our campground and check in. It worked. We were both very tired but we made it safely and on time for the calls. While Scotty worked, the kids and I played with my parents in their house.

Sunday July 25, 2021 Church and Horse Shoe Bend

Page, Arizona has a fun ward that we visited today for church. The youth were funny. A boy came up to Graham and said, "That girl thinks you're cute. She wanted your number". hahaha. She didn't get his number because he doesn't have a number. ;).

More water fun today!!

Antelope Canyon is an absolutely amazing slot canyon! We decided to rent two double kayaks and take our two paddle boards into the canyon. The boys pumped up the paddle boards before we walked down the launch ramp. As we were walking down the ramp, one of the paddle boards popped and died. Oof. One of the boys (I won't say who) pumped it up too high. It's supposed to be at 15 PSI but this one boy - A- Nothing - pumped it up to 17 PSI and was too lazy to let the extra air out. Well, life lesson. PSI is actually a thing and is important. We didn't worry much about it because we can take it back to Costco and we still had the other board.

Today we rented a boat and spent the entire day on the water!!! Oh man!! What a great day. It was a magical day!

Unfortunately, Lake Powell's water level is VERY low. It's so low that the boat ramps are almost unlaunchable (my mom said that it's America, I can make up a word if I want - unlaunchable hahaha :)). Low water levels brought now problems on the water. New rocks and islands have popped up and boats can't travel most of the canals that they once could. So sad. We still had an absolute blast. We were very careful with the boat and made sure to scout out the areas we were in so to not hit anything.

The drive from Prove to Lake Powell was very easy and long. Our campground in Page is perfect. The site we got had trees for shade, a pool, a playground and lots of amenities. Not to mention that we are located about 5 miles from the Wahweap Marina Boat Launch. Also, we are centrally located to Horse Shoe Bend and Antelope Canyon. All these are places we want to visit while here.

This morning we drove back to Riverton to eat breakfast/lunch with Lori and the kids. Jim's Restaurant is around the corner from their house so we went there;)). Everyone ordered yummy food and ate what their tummies could handle!!

Tuesday July 20, 2021 Adam's House then Summer and JP!

After sleeping in because we are all so tired, the kids and I went over to Riverton to play at Adam's house with his kids!!

This morning I met my long last sister in SLC at Memory Grove Park! Karen Weichers and I have a long history together and she seriously is my partner in crime;)). We had to get together!

Grace and Joe live less than two miles from our campground so it was a no brainer to go to church with them. Tressie drove out to come with us to church.

Saturday July 17, 2021 - Spalsh Summit and the Wilson Family

Utah is HOT in the summer time. We thought it would be fun to play at Splash Summit today!! This water park used to be called 7 peaks. Tressie (Scotty's older sister) came out to spend the day with us!! She used to live in Simi Valley with us. We have really missed her. Grace has three kids. We brought her older two boys with us, Lou and Jack. Faye is Gracies youngest, she is 7 months old. The kids went on almost everything at the park. It was so sweet watching the cousins watch out for each other and play together. We are truly blessed in the family department.

Bright and early, we got up and drove away;(. It is very sad to leave our beloved friends, but we have more adventure ahead of us:)). The drive to Provo takes about 5 hours with our trailer. We made two stops before actually getting to our campground so we could see family and friends.

Camping on this lake was the best decision. The Turville kids and the LaBass kids got up early and went immediately on the lake! The lake has an area that has a slide and a platform and other things to play on. Many other families come for just the day, so our kids went out there to hang with the other kids. The days went so fast because they were having fun.

Wednesday July 14, 2021 - Friends, Lake, Play and Food

Oh my goodness. Today was just incredible. We played SO hard.

The day started off with the kids in the water. They love those paddle boards.

Early this morning (7AM) we drove away from Yellowstone to Rigby Idaho. Rigby was two hours (plus stops) away. Very short ride. We arrived around 9:30 AM to our next campground on Jefferson County Lake - Or more known as Rigby Lake.

After lots of rest yesterday, I woke up and cleaned the whole trailer;)). We will be traveling tomorrow so I wanted to get all the cleaning done this morning. Here are a few pictures of our wonderful Homie!!!

P.S. If you can tell, finishing this blog is going to be the death of me. It's getting very hard to get myself to do it. So. . . text me and make me finish;))). I don't want to go home, but I'm super burned out of doing this blog. I know it will be a treasure for us so I will continue, but any motivation from y'all would be great:)))

Sunday July 11, 2021 - Church and Day of Serious Rest!

Taj woke up and gave me the biggest snuggles. Nothing is better:).

Grand Teton NP is about 2 1/2 hours away from us. We decided that we must go there;)))

We got up early this morning and drove through Yellowstone to Grand Teton!!

My sweet little T woke up so cute today. I just love his cheeks:))

Day 2 in Yellowstone was wonderful!!

We left the trailer at 9 AM and didn't come back until around 8PM. We played hard all day. The kids ate it all up. They love it here.

Wednesday July 7, 2021 Yellowstone NP Day 1

Happy Yellowstone!!! I love this National Park. It's so cool.

Today we explored the West Entrance all the way to Old Faithful. It's basically the South-Western side of Yellowstone. We have plenty of time to hit the other parts of the park. This park is huge by the way.

Enjoy!!

Here we are leaving the Billings KOA!! Good Bye!!!!

We drove our 4-5 hours into West Yellowstone. Our KOA is literally 1.5 miles away from the West Entrance of Yellowstone. This KOA is extremely expensive. It's not even my favorite KOA. I was a bit disappointed when we got into our site.

Back on the road again. Mt. Rushmore completes our two week detour that we had to make because traveling into Canada was a no go. Now we need to drive all the way back to Montana to head to Yellowstone for our next scheduled stop.

The drive from here to our KOA by Yellowstone is like 11 hours. That is so not happening in one day. I decided to break up the drive. The Billings KOA that we stay at, is 6 hours from here, so I booked one night at that KOA. That way we can drive there today, then finish the drive tomorrow. Good Plan!! Go Team!!

Sunday July 4, 2021 Happy Birthday America!!!

I didn't sleep much last night. I woke up sick :(. With everyone sick, we decided to keep our germs to ourselves and stay home from church. This was sad because we had a friend in Rapid City waiting for us to go to church with them. :(. Oh well. We all slept in as long as we could. Then we slowly got moving for the day. Once everyone was ready, we did our own Sacrament meeting and Come Follow Me. I slept most of the day. The kids were starting to feel better but they were still down for the day. It's not fun to be sick:(.

Around 6 PM I started to feel a bit better and the kids were obviously feeling better by their crazy energy. Mt. Rushmore does a show at night and usually does fireworks for the 4th. They didn't get the approval this year for fireworks, which was a bummer. We all wanted to go and see the show so we cleaned up and drove up to celebrate the 4th with our Presidents!

This morning, Scotty and I got up at 4:30 AM for a bike ride. Since all the kids are sick, we wanted to leave early to be back early. Last year when we were here, Scotty and I put together this bike ride. We've been wanting to do the ride ever since. Now that we are back, we are doing it!!! It's a long one and we haven't been training much, so I was hoping to not die. Scotty and I just decided to take it slow and take breaks.

One last picture of our view before we head out. Since we couldn't go to Canada, we decided to hit Mt. Rushmore for the 4th of July again. If you follow us, then you'd know that we went to Mt. Rushmore last 4th of July. We loved it so much that we wanted to go back. After this stop, we will back on our regular itinerary. We still wish we could have gone into Canada, but we enjoyed the other stops we made instead.

This is our map of our trip. It's so crazy to see all the places we've been. This map is and will be a treasure for us. It needs to be framed when we get home;).

Wednesday June 30, 2021 - Travel day to Devils Tower, Wyoming

This morning we traveled from Billings, Montana to Devils Tower, Wyoming!! Our travel time was around 4 hours. The drive was easy and we didn't have to stop for Scotty to work, only for pit stops:))). We are again at a KOA. This KOA is literally at the base of Devils Tower. The view is amazing.

Today it got up to 99 degrees here in Billings. When it's hot outside, we hit the water:)). Our KOA has a pool that we spent the entire morning in. There were plenty of other kids there to play with. We brought our tubes and goggles and they had stayed cool:))

Monday June 28, 2021 Travel Day to Billings Montana

Today is a travel day!!

Before we left, but after we packed up the trailer, the kids and I went to town just one last time!!

Our first stop was to the Sweet Palace. We had to get some yummies one last time from there.

Happy Sunday!!

Today we joined a small branch here in Philipsburg for church. The members of this branch travel from other towns to run the meetings. They said that visitors usually make up the most part of their numbers. Just like all the other wards we have visited, the meetings were wonderful and the spirit was there. They asked Asher to help pass the sacrament. I love going to church with no masks on and I love shaking hands with people!!

Saturday June 26, 2021 - Family day at Gem Mountain

Today is the day!! As a family, we all went to find some gems!!! We bought three buckets today!! With six people, the three buckets actually went by pretty fast. Everyone found great finds! Lots of sapphires of all colors today. The difference between today and the last two days of gem finding, was that we made an appointment to get our gems evaluated! They look at each sapphire and tell you which ones are good to heat and cut and which ones are not. We found 15 good ones that can be heated and cut. Then, we found a ton of sapphires that have a few flaws but can still be heated and cut. The largest pile that we found were sapphires that had way too many flaws to heat so we can do something fun with these.

This morning, Asher and Graham didn't wake up. So, I took Pepper and Taj to the local ice cream shop!! This place makes it's own ice cream in house. The owner showed us how she makes their ice cream.

Friday, December 31, 2021

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Thursday, November 4, 2021

Wednesday, August 18, 2021

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Monday, August 2, 2021

Sunday, August 1, 2021

Saturday, July 31, 2021

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Monday, July 26, 2021

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Sunday, July 18, 2021

Saturday, July 17, 2021

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Monday, July 5, 2021

Thursday, July 1, 2021

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Sunday, June 27, 2021

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