Day 17

We are home now! What an amazing and unforgetable trip.

I was asked today, what was the worst and the best part of the trip? I will answer here.

So the best thing (I think most of us in the family are in agreement) was La Push. Let me explain a little. First we all really enjoyed the time together playing games at the hotel at night, but seeing that this is something we can always do at home as well, we picked the second thing which was actually something we could only do on the trip. La Push was it. There are many reasons for this. If you look at the slide show, most of the tide pool images are from La Push. I think the biggest deal was that we were able to sit and watch a family of sea otters which were not very far away from us. We went when the tide was completly out and we were able to watch from rocks that normally would be under water. The sea otters played on some rocks and some played in the water and then there were some that were fishing for fish and clams and such. We were able to see some of them catch things and then jump up on rocks and eat what they caught. Next we were able to see LOTS of sea creatures in the tide pools including the sunflower star fish that is in the slideshow. This is not a normal thing to see in the tide pools as we learned a few days later when we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium (Tonianns favorite). I guess it was a very rare thing and that they are normally found in deep water. We were able to watch it and touch it. I could go on for a long time about La Push.... It was our favorite thing!

What was our least favorite thing? Most of us had different ones. Tylers least favorite thing was being chased by the cow elk (see earlier posts for this one). Tonya, Ehlana and Lalenias were some of the hotels we stayed at and Tonianns was those days (2) where we had to drive for a long time (going and coming home). Overall, I think the least favorite thing is that it is over.

It felt good to get home and not have to move to different location from day to day, but it was sure a pretty part of the country to spend the time. If we had to make a recommendation, we would suggest just going someplace along the cost of Washington and just spend all the time there. That is what we would do if we did this all again.

OK, so to now answer the question (which no one figured out, or at least told us they knew), where were we on days 15 and 16. Where was the undisclosed location? It was home! We wanted a couple of days of being home (still on family vacation) and not have to let eveyone know we were back to every day life. I say we were home, but we did not actually spend a lot of time at home. We maintained the "we are on vacation" theme and went and did things in Salt Lake that we would not normally do as a family (i.e. window shopping, and art festivals). Yes it is true we don't get much time to do things like this.

Anyway, the pictures for day 15 that I though for sure Charity would get was from Virgs. The pictures from day 16 were from the chalk art festival that was going on at the Gateway over the weekend. We went there on three different occasions to see the progress, from taping areas off for each of the artists to completion of the work. It rained and some good drawings were washed out but overall some amazing work!

Well, I guess that is all for now. I personally am not looking forward to tomorrow as we all go back to every day life (work, work, and more work) ;-). We hope you enjoyed following our travels and thanks for all the comments and especially to all those who helped us along the way! Here is a final image of our trip. Enjoy!